October 20, 2005
House: Not Just A Hot Doctor On Fox
I absolutely do not have time to be doing a journal entry right now, but I am going through journal withdrawal, and I bet some of you are too, and I made myself a mental promise (broken within a week) to start updating at least once a week, so fine! Fine! I'll update! Fine! Okay.
Fine.
I forget where we were in the Ongoing Saga of Buying a House, the last time I checked in with all of you. Possibly we had just done the inspection? Yes, yes, I have checked my archives and that is where we were as of the last update.
Well, as I started to write in the last entry, before I got interrupted, the inspection went overall pretty well. The major items that the inspectors found were the driveway, which was not difficult, as you could literally trip over it and see the problem, and a section of the roof that seemed to be, and here I quote, "soft." Inspector seemed to be a bit fuzzy on what exactly the implications were of such a spot in the roof. Inspector, to tell you the truth, seemed to be a bit fuzzy in general, possibly as a result of too much chemical substance abuse in the mid-60s, but that is just a guess on my part.
Anyway. A few days after the inspection, we had a little sit-down with our real estate agent to discuss what we should request in terms of repairs. The driveway was obvious; I don't know if I mentioned the exact nature of the problem before, but basically the left-hand side of the driveway has sunk into the ground about six inches, leaving a six-inch lip between the driveway and the floor of the garage. You might be able to get up over this lip with 4WD engaged on your monster truck, but then your monster truck would take out most of the garage roof, so that would still be suboptimal. Anyway, we requested that they fix the driveway. We then moved on to the roof.
At this point we spent several minutes flipping back and forth through the inspection report, trying to find where the inspector had mentioned the soft spot in the roof, only to discover that it was nowhere to be found in the report. A coldly polite call from our agent to the inspector followed. Three phone calls and 20 minutes later, it was determined that the first inspector -- henceforth to be called "Dave I" -- had neglected to mention the roof in his audio tape, which had been transcribed by the second inspector -- henceforth "Dave II" -- into the written report. Daves I and II agreed to fix the report and re-fax it to our agent.
So we requested that the roof be fixed, pursuant to the arrival of the updated report. We also asked that they fix the chimney flashing (improperly sealed with asphalt), the downspouts, the weather stripping, the garage door openers, the double-tapped circuits on the electrical panel downstairs, and the leaking pipe in the basement. A week or so later, somewhat delayed due to the fact that the seller is an over-the-road truck driver, we got our response back. They basically agreed to fix everything but the roof, on the grounds that the roof is not actually leaking.
Hmm, we said. Keith went over there to inspect things for himself. He said he couldn't see much due to a foot of insulation being in the way, but that if there was dry rot going on up there, it couldn't have spread far, because he didn't see anything. A call to Keith's brother, who has some experience with this, confirmed that the damage, if there is any, is not going to be a several-thousand-dollar repair. At this point, interest rates have gone up about half a percent since we locked in, so even if the repair ran around $2-3K, we'd still be better off hanging on to the low interest rate and just making the repair. So, great.
Keith's brother also mentioned that we might want to tear up the carpet in the basement, since it did get kind of wet as a result of the aforementioned leaky pipe. I don't know, though. I kind of want to call in a mold inspector or something to see how bad the problem is, before replacing all that carpet. I mean, if we have to, we have to, but dude, that seems expensive.
In the midst of all this back-and-forth (almost typed "back-and-froth", which is probably more appropriate), we got a call from the bank informing us that our loan was approved. I was mildly elated for almost an entire day, until the letter arrived in the mail informing us what all the terms and conditions were. Basically they want us to document our entire lives, including but not limited to our rental history, work history, explanation of gaps in work history, explanation of unrelatedness of jobs in work history, bank account balances, interpersonal relationships developed at jobs in work history, unclean thoughts had about hot temp co-workers at jobs in work history, and W-2 forms.
So now the only obstacles left are 1) stuffing our entire lives into a manila envelope and mailing them to the bank, and 2) passing the appraisal. That should be happening sometime next week, I think. Then, uh, I think we can close. But I'm still not holding my breath. I keep expecting some horrible problem to manifest that will torpedo the deal.
In other news, my sister had her baby, I finally got some actual billable work from my employers, Stazi started potty training, and we found an infestation of roaches in our kitchen. Not in that order. But I am seriously out of time and need to get cracking on my index so that I can actually, y'know, bill somebody for my billable work. Consider yourselves updated.
Posted at October 20, 2005 2:38 PM
Posted by: annie at October 21, 2005 5:05 PM
It's not easy is it? but it sounds like you're as calm as can be expected will all the hoop-jumping that buying a house requires.
Congratulations and good luck with bank-related paperwork. you're almost there!