Day 92 - A bit behind due to lack of internet.
Day 88 -
I have never been so tired in my life. Two days of moving has turned into four with an additional two days of clean-up. When did I accumulate so much stuff? It just kept multiplying. It seemed every time we took a box out of the house there were two more in its place. The movers were even baffled. They couldn’t believe they underestimated our move by so much. Apparently, that’s never happened to them before. They have only ever underestimated by an hour in the past. Guess we were too much for them.
So, here I sit at my in-laws typing my blog that I can’t post because we haven’t had the time to figure out the internet connection. But we are comfortable here amongst our boxes and are grateful for that. I have to head back to the house today to finish sanding the map wall, clean the kitchen, the basement and grab the remaining things in the house and in the yard. Yesterday, at the end of the day, I was so tired I actually taped shut an empty box and asked my husband to carry it to the truck for me. Once he picked it up, it was so light he almost flung it across the room. I was so embarrassed. I crawled inside it and tried to shut out the world. The streams of light that flowed in were actually quite beautiful… but anyway…
It looks like the closing is on for tomorrow at 10 am. Right after the 9 am walk-through. Guess they are going to buy it after all. We have the final signed addendum in our hands. They did ask if we could call the home warranty folks about the sump pump. Had to laugh at that one… ahh, no. It’s going to be your house in a day, you call! I have a feeling three months down the road they will be asking my husband to make the appointment to open the pool for them. Do these people know how to do anything themselves? I could have sworn they were in their 30’s, not their teens.
Day 91 -
Congratulations family! We are now officially homeless. We closed on the house yesterday and I have to say, I feel relieved.
The whole closing process made for an interesting learning experience… Life has them waiting around every corner. You see, we received the estimated settlement sheet a few days before, and I immediately took a look at the bottom line… Wouldn’t you? I wanted to see what kind of money I was getting out of this house, our down payment on the next one was depending on it. To my utter shock and awe, (seriously I think I actually dropped to my knees), it said we were only getting $18,000. What? Are you serious? You’ve got to be kidding me! I quickly picked up my cell phone and called my husband who was at Home Depot getting another pad lock for the fourth POD we needed to order at the last minute. I was practically in tears, ok… I’ll fess up. I was completely exhausted, my defenses were down and I WAS in tears. I expressed my concerns to my husband through my hyperventilated mumbles and he called Roxie, our agent, to investigate while I tried to calm down in a much needed hot shower.
After calming down, I took it upon myself to find out what the hell was going on. Closing costs, they call them. More like, lets-see-how-much-we-can-rip-you-off-costs. Well, if you’re not careful you will end up paying much more than you bargained for, and NO ONE is going to help you or tell you different unless, YOU call them on it. For starters, “$350 for Water Escrow”… Water escrow? How can there be a water escrow… we have a well not public water! The brokers fees I figured were set at 9% instead of 5%. Wow, now this is the buyers agent putting this all together with the title company. Nine percent? Glad I didn’t hire him. We were paying upwards of $500.00 to the title company for “document preparation”. Again, why should I pay someone I didn’t hire. It also states in the contract of sale, (yes, I read it!) that the buyers are responsible for all fees associated with the title work. The contract also states we would split the transfer taxes 50/50. Well, looking at this statement it seems a bit unbalanced. More like 70/30. It took a few back and forths to try to straighten this out, yet still, it was slightly wrong at the closing table. I have to say, I’m damn proud of myself for sticking to my moral high road here and making sure I wasn’t ripped off. It was a double team for the books. My husband drew the agents and buyers attention away and I stuck it to Mr. Title Company.
We ended up walking away with $24,000.00 extra dollars than they wanted to give us. Can you imagine if I didn’t take a stand? Makes me wonder if the buyers didn’t get ripped off too. They just sat there and nodded as Mr. Title explained, all to quickly, every charge. How much money do you think agents and title companies make unethically every year? Well, when I buy the next house, I’m going through that settlement sheet with a fine tooth comb. No more Mr. Nice Guy! And you know what… It feels good!
