Wednesday, March 15, 2006

Easy Like Sunday Mornin'

Can anything ever be easy?

My parents are moving. The buying and selling of homes for them has been a complete nightmare from day one. I will spare you all the details, but here are some highlights from the past nine months.

  • We spend six weeks and they spend $8,000 getting their log cabin with two barns, two corrals, one shed and 8+ wooded acres ready. They put it on the market.
  • My parents make an offer with a contingency on a great house. Their cabin still had no offers. They lost the great house to someone else.
  • My parents make an offer with a contingency on another great house. Their cabin still had no offers. They lost the great house to someone else.
  • Their cabin has an offer! The people are from Arizona and aren’t planning on moving to the Midwest for 6 months. They drag their feet. Closing dates change. Survey’s are requested. Closing dates change again. Earnest money is not sent. Closing dates change again.
  • Cabin has showing after showing. Cleaning constantly. No more offers.
  • My parents make an offer with a contingency on another great house. Their cabin has an offer, but no closing date. They lose great house after contract expires.
  • My parents make an offer with contingency on another great house. Sellers won’t accept a contingency. They lose great house.
  • My parents make an offer with contingency on another great house. Sellers won’t accept a contingency. They lose great house.
  • My parents make an offer with no contingency on another great house. They will carry two mortgages if they have to. Closing on their new house scheduled for 3/17/06!
  • Another offer on the cabin! A lawyer is now involved and tells Arizona people since their earnest money wasn’t sent, they broke contract. They lose cabin. New buyers have a contingency but it’s only for 30 days. Their condo sells quickly. This is going to happen!
  • Packing, packing, packing. Every weekend.
  • Cabin buyer’s bank has cabin appraised for loan and appraises value for $20,000 less than offer ($20,000 less than appraisal my parents had done 18 months ago). My parents pay for another appraisal that comes in $5,000 more than offer. Excitement sets in. Buyers call and say they want to change offer to less money due to low appraisal ($7,500 less to be exact). WHAT? My parents tell them they will drop original offer $3,000 only. They accept. Closing on cabin set for 3/31/06.

Will this really happen?

  • Closing on parents new house scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on Friday, 3/17/06. New carpet for upstairs scheduled to be installed on Saturday morning while we load trucks at cabin. Sister Stephanie and I plan on painting three bedrooms Friday night, before carpet installed.

Will this really happen?

  • My parents get a call last night. There is a snag in their loan for new house; will have to postpone closing a week, maybe two. Painting rescheduled. Carpeting rescheduled. The 15 people all planning to help with move this weekend are called and informed.

This has been such a horrible experience. On top of all of this, I had plans next Friday AND next Saturday night. I don’t want to reschedule them, but what do I do? Will the closing even happen? What if I move my plans back a week and the closing is moved again?

Don’t these people know I don’t tolerate drama very well?

3 comments:

Jenny said...

What a pain in the booty. I hope it smooths out and all your plans work too.

BoomBoom said...

Me too.

Both evenings next weekend are with you, so you should have a vested interest here. Friday night with you and the Duchess and Saturday night your Gala.

Don't we sound like royalty when I put it like that? Duchesses and gala's.

Sir Seanface said...

Banks could stand to learn a lesson or two about customer service. Sure there was a "snag" with their loan and they have to delay the closing a week or two. They know that people are arranging their lives around the signing of a couple of pieces of paper would it kill them to get everything in order and make sure the dates that they give are fairly solid. Sad thing is that if you were closing a real estate deal worth $3.4 million they would pull all nighters to make sure the deal hit on the date they gave you. Hell you could even squeeze them so that if they missed a date that you named they would pay you a fee for each day the closing ran over. Money talks and all we can do down here is whisper.