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!

Selling a house — it’s a lot of paperwork

This is my first time selling a house and I’m just amazed at the number of steps involved in the process.

First, there was the decluttering and cleaning. Then we put the house on the market and waited for potential buyers to come look at it. We waited a long time, five months in fact, but then we had two parties who were both real interested. We hoped for a bidding war, of course, but that didn’t materialize. We were left with one poky buyer. After the negotiations were completed, we signed the purchase agreement. The next night we had to sign the disclosures; although we had signed them when we first put the house on the market we had to sign them again after the buyer signed them so that we all agreed that everything was still the same as it was in February.

My realtor told us things were still iffy until the home inspection, which we set up for a few days after we’d signed the purchase agreement. I let the inspector in and then had to leave the house for three hours; my fingers were crossed until we got the results of the inspection almost a full 24 hours later. (Yeah, he and the realtor were slow.) We had to resolve whatever issue there was within two days; luckily for us, there was a weekend in there. We had a big issue to resolve, but were able to resolve it without us, the sellers, having to put forth any more money.

I thought things would be done then until we showed up at the closing to sign the house over. I was wrong. There seems to be something new every day.

A week after the home inspection was the appraisal. A stranger came to the house and looked it over with a sharp eagle eye, making his assessment of what the home is worth. After walking quickly through the home — with me trying my best to sell the features and point out the upgrades we’d made — he sat in his car in the church parking lot across the street and made his determination. My realtor told me if it came in low, we’d have to renegotiate terms. I kept my fingers crossed again. The assessor had made a big deal about telling me that due to new federal regulations, he is no longer able to talk to loan officers about anything. Too many people had been abusing appraisals, apparently. Well, when the appraisal for our house came in, it just so happened to be at the exact figure the buyer was getting the home for. Hmmm... Sounds suspicious to me. I’m pretty sure there was some hanky-panky stuff going on between that appraiser and loan officer.

A man showed up in my yard a few days ago unannounced. I went out to see what he was doing there and he informed me he was from the title company. He was there to verify the property lines and make sure there were no encroachments. I showed him the two stakes standing in the back, and then the general whereabouts of the front two. He was there about a half-hour, leaving several flags behind. I guess I won’t need to worry about

I also got a few calls from the title company this week. Bonnie needed the account number and security number of my current mortgage with Wells Fargo. Uh-oh. Two weeks ago we packed up all our files into giant boxes and they were stuffed into a moving pod. I don’t even have a general number to call Wells Fargo. Without that account number there was apparently no way to make sure that the money coming from our buyer would pay off our mortgage. Uh-oh. It took a frustrating call to that big corporation to get my account number. And after that, Bonnie needed to verify what my name is now. Because I got married after building this house, I’m going to need to sign my name even more than usual on the documents, including as “formerly known as so and so” (just like Prince).

All of this has been on top of frantically searching for a new house, packing up the old and finding an apartment to rent in the interim. Whew. Did I mention I hate moving?

I am planning to call all our utility companies to stop service the day of closing, as well as my insurance agent to cancel homeowner’s insurance. And I need to drop into the post office to ask them to hold my mail until we find a permanant home.

Also, the day of closing I guess the buyer will do a walk-through of the house to make sure it’s still in good condition and he still wants it. The house needs to be completely emptied of our stuff before he comes, and we have to be gone by then. His realtor called mine yesterday to ask if they could do it the afternoon before. I said no. They’re a bit pushy. It’s not his until he signs for it, and that isn’t until Friday at 11 a.m.

I’m not sure what else is going to pop up in the final week before closing, but I guess I won’t be surprised at anything. There are a lot of steps involved in selling a home. Now I know.

To you potential home buyers, Part III

Don’t trust home inspectors. Now, I’m sure there are some good home inspectors out there, ones with construction background, but most of them merely took a class and started shop. They don’t really know what separates a good home from a bad.

Case in point: A home inspector went through my beautiful, mostly new house last week. This house passed all its inspections when it was built just five years ago. Now, as a homeowner, I could have chosen to do something crazy in those intervening five years, a storm could have damaged the outside, or I could have done something stupid to destroy something inside. And that’s why home inspections before a real estate transaction are necessary.

But this home inspector stated that the fascia was faulty. To be specific, he said that whoever did the fascia on this home needed to go back to school. He further stated that the entire thing needed to be redone.

Now, I happen to know the contractor who put the fascia on my home. I know him very, very well. It’s my father. My meticulous, perfection-isn’t-good-enough father who has been in the construction trade since he was old enough to swing a hammer beside his father. Siding — and with it soffit and fascia — are his specialty. In fact, you could say he’s an expert on it.

So the idea that he did it wrong was preposterous.

And the fact that the home inspector stated he needed to go back to school was, well, it was offensive. Even more, it was unprofessional.

The thing is, home inspectors don’t actually need to have any construction background before becoming a home inspector. There’s a test to pass, but the rest is, well, up to them. They apply their own opinions to their inspections, and if they have no real-world experience, those opinions are often faulty. In my family of construction workers, the term “home inspector” is a curse word. In most cases, these home inspectors don’t really know much. But the problem is they have a lot of power. If a home inspector says there’s a problem, he will likely scare a buyer off. If the buyer sticks around, the “issue” is going to cost the seller time and money to get it fixed.

There are certainly some issues with homes that need to be fixed, and there are certainly good home inspectors out there. The lesson here: Hire home inspectors with construction experience, preferably contractor experience. Use one that had a good reputation as a contractor and one that has a good reputation now as a home inspector. My realtor advises her buyers to bring their friends with to look at homes, the ones that are actively working as electricians, plumbers and sheetrockers. Get opinions from folks you can trust.

I’m just lucky we were able to convince our buyer that my contractor knew more about fascia than his home inspector. It was touch and go for a few days — and that’s a horrible situation to be in as a seller.

To you potential home buyers, Part II

I just can’t help but think that every evil in our society would be remedied if we remember the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have done to yourself. It seems very fitting when it comes to real estate transactions.

For example: Say you are “Mark” and you’re in the market for a house. You’re moving into the area from Canada because you’ve accepted a new job here. It’s July and you start work on September 1. You visit my house on July 2, and then see it again a few weeks later. Then your realtor calls up mine and tells me you’re going to submit an offer by Friday, July 23. Well, that Friday comes and goes, as does the next and then the next. As home owners, we’ve given up on you. Then suddenly you make a low offer. It’s not low enough to piss us off, but it’s lower than we wanted. So, we begin to negotiate.

This is not a good time for you to take off to Mexico for a week.

Especially considering you want to close on the house by mid-September.

When it takes one and a half weeks to respond to a figure from the seller, well, that’s considered bad form. You’re supposed to respond within 2 days. Did your realtor forget to tell you that?

Of course, your bad form is a little more understandable when your realtor then takes off for 5 days in the middle of the negotation process. So now, what should have been wrapped up in July takes until the fourth week of August.

You the buyer have now given us just 3 weeks to find a house and avoid being homeless.

I wish you would have considered our timeline as well as your own. I wish you would have realized that when you get a house, someone else is losing one. I wish you would have applied the Golden Rule and considered how your actions would affect another.

Yep, we’d all be better off if we considered the Golden Rule more often.

To you home buyers

For all you potential home buyers out there, I’d like to make a small request.

Please consider the people who own the houses you’re looking at.

Consider the time and effort they have to put into making their house shine for you. It’s not easy when you have kids, especially, to leave a house spotless for a showing. Every thing I put away, my daughter pulls back out. It takes 3-4 times to get it away for good. Then she needs a snack, and the crumbs cover the entire kitchen floor. We are usually at home, so leaving for a showing is a big deal and typically interupts nap time. It’s not fun to wake a toddler up in the middle of the nap because someone is coming to look at the house.

But I’m happy to do it if the house sells.

What isn’t great is if I go to all that work — and then the potential buyer never even shows up. According to my realtor, it happens a lot. Folks just don’t show up. They might not even call their realtor to let them know they won’t be coming. In case you didn’t realize it, when you do that, you’ve not only wasted the time of the home owner, but also the staff of 2 real estate offices who spent time making calls and setting up those appointments.

So, please, next time you’re scoping out houses, remember the Golden Rule. Do unto others...