On Buying A House

Buying and selling a home are not easy tasks. We sold our place last fall, and just closed on a new house on Dec. 22 after searching over four months for the perfect place. I’ve decided there are no perfect homes, so the way to get what I want is to remodel. We bought a fixer-upper in South Minneapolis that had been foreclosed on.

Buying a bank-owned propery means that the entire purchase is going to take longer and be more frustrating — and the only reason to go through it is to get a home for less. We have limited funds, so a remodel was out of the picture unless we could get a house for under $200,000.

After selling a new home in Cambridge for $200,000 we were amazed at how much less home we got in Minneapolis for the same price. That was a hard pill to swallow. After biting the bullet and accepting that home prices really aren’t that low (despite the media reports to the contrary), we made the offer on a foreclosure that have been lived in very hard. But unlike many other foreclosures, it hadn’t been so badly damaged by the folks who previously lived there that we needed to repair broken walls and burst pipes. Thank goodness.

We made the offer in early November, and then waited to hear back... And waited and waited. It was over a week before the bank told us they had accepted the offer, and it took nearly that long for their realtor to let us know they were looking at it. I’ll just state up front that I don’t have a high opinion of most realtors, and I have a particularly low disregard for those that handle foreclosures. The agent representing this particular bank didn’t work for this commission, that’s for sure.

I do recommend our realtor to anyone; Vickie Christensen of Century 21 Moline Realty in Cambridge goes above and beyond — and I’m not just saying that because we are related. She returned phone calls, and when she didn’t hear back from someone else, she hounded him/her, calling all the numbers she could round up, including cell, office, and home, as well as emailing him. When there was an issue -- and we had plenty of them — she stayed on it until it had been resolved. That’s the kind of realtor I can admire.

Knowing we had a holiday (Thanksgiving) in the mix, we set the closing date for five weeks out. We had to push it out another 2 or 3 times because the bank we bought the house from was so slow our lender couldn’t get things done in time.

Another big issue that muddied our deal was the bank account our down payment was in. When we got the check after selling our home, I dashed to the bank and popped it in my account. To make things simpliest, we decided that only my husband would apply for the loan on the new house. The problem surrounded the fact that we have seperate bank accounts. (We’ve operated just fine until now with our own seperate ones.)

For some reason I still don’t understand, our lender was far too interested in where the money was coming from for the down payment on the new house.

We had to state that we were still together, hadn’t seperated and hadn’t filed for divorce. We had to reiterate that we were living together. I sent one letter stating my husband had full access to my bank account. That wasn’t enough, so I withdrew the money and put it in his account. Then I needed to send a letter stating that I’d given him the money to use for the down payment. Then I had to send a letter that we both signed stating we lived together. Whew! Lesson learned. Next time pay attention to who will be applying for the loan and make sure the proper funds get in that bank account.

Our other major issue surrounded our home appraisal. The appraiser noted a broken window in one bedroom and a stain on the kitchen ceiling. Our lender refused to give us funds until the window had been replaced, and because of a snow storm the foreclosure bank-hired contractor didn’t get to the job until the day after we were supposed to close. Then without a request from us, the bank decided to hire someone to paint the ceiling in the kitchen. This brainiac sprayed the ceiling without covering any of the cabinets or appliances with plastic, leaving white overspray on everything. I couldn’t believe it. Good thing we planned to redo the kitchen otherwise I would have been absolutely furious. They damaged the home we were purchasing just days before the sale was final.

In general, we learned the contractors these banks hire are total hacks. Instead of rekeying the garage, the guy just broke the door. When doing a pressure test on the plumbing, they made a new hole in the wall instead of using the access box right above it. And someone along the way broke a screen in another room.

We were nervous the day of our closing because our realtor told us things could still go sour. Luckily for us, the deal went through and we only had to wait around 2 hours in the office of the title company. I’m so glad we didn’t have to return the next day. Finally we were homeowners again!