This transaction has inspired a couple of posts, most recently This Transaction Could Make Me Bald! And yesterday was settlement day! Yippee! Whoo hoo!
But not so fast.
This might have been my all time worst settlement, except that everyone around the table kept their sense of humor and, for the most part, composure. I was the only one to drop the "F Bomb", and I only did it once.
It was supposed to settle on November 11th, and then there were lender delays, one after the other. So here we were on Friday at 4:00 pm, and the papers had just been sent over. But there was one little tiny glitch.
The sales price on all of the loan documents was wrong - too low.
The sellers' subsidy got left off.
And the lender said basically, tough. That's the way it got approved. Deal with it. If they want the house, they sign the papers.
Huh?
Three hours and a bottle of champagne later, it was fixed, and we left happy. Somehow the loan officer stepped up and convinced the lender to redo the papers, even though it was after 5:00 pm on Friday.
It could have been a very different story with a different cast of characters.
The only bad moment was when the buyers, the sellers and I realized it was almost 7:00 pm and we all had dogs in our homes who hadn't been out since early morning. Uh oh!
The buyer's agent, Delonte Moore from Keller Williams, was calm and professional, maybe because he didn't have a dog to worry about. His buyers, purchasing their first place, somehow knew that it was all going to work and they stayed very even. My sellers were terrific and got a little nervous until they finally walked out with a check in hand.
If I hadn't figured it out before, this is a new era in lending.
It's not just that they are nit picking everyone to death, but they are also stretched thin in terms of staff - trying to do more loans with fewer people to process them. And we're seeing the stupid mistakes that waste everyone's time.
When it was over, I went to my book group meeting and drank way too much wine to come home and blog about it.
But it's over! Everyone is happy! And I own Delonte Moore a big thank you.
Comments (14)Subscribe to CommentsComment