House drama

A lot of people had invisible friends growing up. I don't recall having one, but I think I've had something following me around for many years now. He's a llama named Bob, but he's not a normal llama. He's a Drama Llama. Bob the Drama Llama. I can't seem to take two steps without this fellow spitting drama into my life. So he's definitely invisible, but I would hesitate to call him a friend.

We started our loan process at the beginning of March. We had a loan guy that has helped us try to get two houses in the past: one in Austin that got killed a week before closing due to Jenny losing her job, and one here in SA that got killed at the beginning because I hadn't been at my job long enough. We stuck with him because he has done so much work for us, and he had good rates. We liked him and really wanted to see him get paid for all the hard work he has done in the past. He's had periods of time where he went incommunicado, but they didn't last long and he always came through for us in the end.

Because we have dumped all our extra cash into paying off debt (we have slightly more than $10k left, including our student loan - we even own both cars outright at this point), we haven't kept a ton of money in the bank for backup. This means that the only loan we could get was a USDA loan, which allowed for no money down. Our credit is in the mid 700s, our income to debt ratio is amazing, job history is solid - aside from the lack of liquid funds, we are an ideal borrower.

USDA in Texas currently has about a 4 week backup, but that was a non-issue. After all, we were starting the process a full 8 weeks before the scheduled closing date.

The trouble began when we couldn't get our lender to return calls. We'd get little snippets from him along the way, all expressing confidence that we could get closed as promised, but no real communications and full disclosure. because he had gotten us all the way to the end on the first house he helped us with despite some periods of this kind of communication gap, I wasn't too worried. My realtor, the seller, and the seller's realtor were all expressing doubts, but I trusted our guy. He had proven himself.

But the silence went on and on and on. He wouldn't return phone calls, texts, or emails.

A week out from closing, our realtor sent us an email from a lender he knew - enclosed was the number for USDA. I called them to see where our application was, and they had no record of us. Our lender had never submitted us to USDA in the first place. I was stunned and angry - what the heck was our guy doing?

I expressed frustration to Jenny that he was working solo and there was no office number to call anyone else at to see what was going on. She told me that there was an office number in his signature. I went and looked, and sure enough - there was an office number in normal text surrounded by his hyperlinked cell number, fax number, and highlighted email address. I am so used to looking for the hyperlinks or other important information highlighted that I never saw the office number, even after a hundred times looking at his signature.

I may claim XY chromosomes on this one since this seems to be a common occurrence at our house. "Honey, where is [object]? I can't find it anywhere, and I've been looking for 10 minutes." 

"It's right in front of you."

[look for another 2-3 minutes, see nothing]

"I don't see it."

"It's right there."

"Ohhhhhhhhh!"

Like seriously major blind spots somehow.

Anyhoo, I call the office number and that's when things really start to unravel. They had no file for me. There's some mention that our lender was working on a loan for us, but there was no info. He had never gone to his own branch manager for help after hitting some kind of snag at the very beginning regarding my job history, so they had no earthly idea what was going on either. He got a hold of our lender and told me that our guy had hit some kind of major personal life snag that caused him to just fall apart. We happened to catch the brunt of it, because it seemed that he hadn't done hardly a dang thing for us since the very beginning of the process.

Our guy was stepping aside and giving all of his files to his branch manager to finish up, but it was too late for us. We were not closing when we thought we were.

We decided to go with the seller's lender to keep things smooth, but we are looking at another 5-7 weeks before we get to move in. And lucky for us, the sellers are an awesome couple. The four of us get along famously, and they said to me on more than one occasion that if they had been selling to anyone else, they would have backed out and put their house on the market again, but because they like us so much, they really want to sell to us. The feeling is mutual - we all feel like we've gained some good friends through this whole thing.

However, there are some other issues. We had already given our 60 day notice, and when I checked with the complex, they had leased out our place, so come end of May, we have to find a place to live for a month until we can close. 

I had gone out of my way to prevent all of this. I have moved so much, I wanted to move once more into a house and STAY, so this is why we went with someone we knew would do a good job, gave plenty of time for any snags to work themselves, and otherwise be completely smooth. But dang freaking Bob had to go and stick his drama llama head in the middle of all this, leaving spit everywhere.

If he wasn't invisible, I'd break his stupid drama llama legs.

Though I have to admit, at the end of all of it, while I don't like what has happened, I'm actually doing pretty well. I've dealt with much worse and come out on top, so I can handle this. I have a fantastic wife who was been wonderful through the whole thing, helped me keep my head on straight when I got hot (and vice versa), great sellers who are turning into great friends, and we are still getting our awesome house, just not when we had planned on it originally. 

Life is good, I just wish Bob would find someone else to bug for a while.


Current mood: paradoxically chipper