Buying Our House, Part IV: Closing Happened, I Promise

Parts I, II, and III, if you're interested.

Last we left, the bank was off underwriting our loan, which I guess was just the bank checking to make sure we didn't lie about stuff or that our financial situation hadn't drastically changed since we were pre-approved? I don't know. It went through with no problem, so if you're having trouble getting your underwriting approved, I don't know what to do with that. Nine days before closing we received notice from our lender that underwriting had gone through.

At this point, we were pretty well done. We had a couple of electrical and plumbing items that we had requested the sellers fix after our home inspection. We had some difficulties in communicating with the sellers about what they were actually supposed to do, but eventually it all got sorted out.  We received copies of receipts as "proof" that the work was finished.

Two days before closing, on a Wednesday (again, how do 9 to 5 workers do this kind of stuff?) we did a final walk-through of the house with our realtor.  This was kind of tricky to do because the owners still had a lot of stuff in the house so it was kind of hard to see if things had been fixed as requested. As a matter of fact, the sellers had a huge piece of furniture blocking an electrical outlet that wasn't to code and it had been blocking there during the inspection, too, so it wasn't until we moved in that we realized we'd have to have the electrician* back to fix that outlet, among other things.  It was a tense time, but we tried to just go with the flow. It did not help matters that my mother-in-law was still quite ill and we really didn't want to be dealing with this stuff, but there we were, dealing with it.

Then we had to wire the remaining part of our closing costs to the title company and that was a bit of a hassle. The teller at the credit union didn't know what she was doing and neither did we, so that was a bit nerve-wracking, imagining all our hard earned money going to the wrong place, but it was eventually done and I called the title company every six hours until I was assured it had arrived. Our closing costs were $41,980.97, but don't forget that we had already paid $10,000 in earnest money, so we had wired just over $30,000.

The title company was located in a gorgeous space that used to be a church. Capitalism = religion.

Friday afternoon we drove to the title company and signed a fair number of documents, many of which we had already esigned.  They also told us a few things about how to pay the mortgage and things like that. Then we went into a room with the sellers (this was the first time we'd ever met them!) and signed a few more documents and then they gave us the keys! They also told us a few things about the house. The woman began crying when she talked about the birds** in the yard.  I was sad for her, but really was too excited to really feel too badly about this.

After an awkward parting, our realtor*** gave us a thank you note with an Amazon gift card**** and we went to our new house!

Next time, I'll do a brief rundown of everything we did in the two weeks in between when we had the keys and when we actually moved in. That will finish up this series before I segue into NOW THAT WE'VE MOVED IN THERE'S A BAT IN THE ATTIC series. 

*Our house is older, so the electrical system is from four different periods. The outlets themselves are mostly two-prong. The owners originally had a bunch of ungrounded three-prong outlets that weren't to code. The owners basically just reverted them all to two-prong. We then hired that same electrician to undo all the new two-prong and make them GFIs (Ground Fault Interrupter) because we couldn't have zero three-prong outlets in the room with our entertainment center. Anyway.

**I later learned through a woman in my book club that the seller is actually one of the most prolific taggers of hummingbirds in the state. I thought she was upset about leaving the HOUSE, but she was actually upset about leaving the BIRDS. She was right to be upset, too, because we immediately took down the hummingbird feeders because it is not my goal in life to have to clean those things out daily.

***She showed us TWO houses and other than a tiny bit of negotiation with the low appraisal, this deal was fairly easy. I bet she thinks of us as one of her easiest commissions ever.

****We used it to buy a lawn mower.