Waiting, Hoping, and Counting Down to Closing!

The last couple of weeks have not brought much progress on our home purchase.  In fact, it’s been downright frustrating!  It took all of last week for the VA appraiser and listing agent to coordinate an appraisal date, and it took a week for the sellers to finally sign a repair agreement with the contractor.  Then it took another week to get on their work schedule!  ARGH!

Meanwhile, our scheduled closing date is just 8 days away on June 5th, and it’s not looking very promising that we can make that date.  The good news is that we got loan approval last week from our lender, and there’s nothing else they need from me. So now we just wait…and wait…and hope we don’t run into any more holdups or snafus along the way!

Today, I finally got word that the appraisal is scheduled for tomorrow!  Yay!  But the lender tells me it can take up to 2 weeks before he actually sends back the written appraisal.  That would really hold things up.  In addition, I also got word that the foundation repairs aren’t even slated to begin until Thursday of this week…and all that has to be re-inspected either by the appraiser or the structural engineer…after the repairs are completed and before closing.  So that’s another potential delay.  And all of that is assuming the appraisal comes back at or above the contracted sales price.

I think we’d be awfully lucky if all those events go down without a hitch before the deadline of Tuesday of next week.  That’s really pushing it.  And all of it has to be reviewed again by the lender, as well, for final approval.  Ugh.  I can easily see our closing getting delayed by at least a week, maybe two.  That would stink.  Because in the end, the sellers still have to lease back the house for 2 weeks after closing in order to give notice to the sellers of the home they are buying, which pushes out our moving date.  That in turn also delays how fast I can get my house ready to be rented, and Steve only has a paid place to stay through the end of June.  So this could get really ugly.  The longer the delay, the more costly everything becomes to us with having to then pay for temporary lodging for Steve, pay another month’s mortgage here, and lose a month in potential rent in this house.  Not good.

So if you have a mind to do it, please pray that our new home closes on the original closing date or as close to it as possible.  We’re so anxious to get settled again!

I also have a moving company coming out this week to give me the first estimate on moving us to TX.  I’m anxious to see how costly this move will actually be.

In other news, I took Hayden shopping today for his first adult men’s suit and tie.  We went to JCPenney and settled on stylish solid black JF J. Ferrar suit with a dotted black tie.  We also picked up a belt, and he’s already got dress shoes.  The special occasion is his upcoming prom and subsequent graduation.  I told him that my parents’ tradition was to buy my brothers a suit as a graduation gift so they’d always have a good suit when the need arose.  So I did the same for him.  He absolutely loves it, and he looks like a grown man!  He cleans up nice, I must say.  It suits him, and he looks very handsome in it.  He spent the evening posing in it like he was in a commercial or something…he was cracking me up!  I think he’s really looking forward to dressing up and going to prom.  I’m really happy that he gets to relax a bit at the end of a very stressful and demanding school year.  We’re in the home stretch!  He also gets to celebrate Senior Day this Friday at the beach with his classmates and their families, and there are only 15 days until graduation!  Yippee!