When this whole mortgage thing is over, maybe I will laugh.
We did not close tonight. Why? Because at 4:30 PM the loan officer called me to tell me that we shouldn’t close tonight because
- We’ve made the payment for this month so we would be paying “double interest”. And we should not close until the 27th anyway because of that.
- The story is that we could save a quarter point or more by waiting till tomorrow when, due to the massive stock exchange tumble this afternoon, everyone is saying that rates are going to drop by a quarter point or more.
The first struck me as odd, because damn it, we agreed to close today two weeks ago. Which means that we missed a golden opportunity to close LAST WEEK. Why didn’t he bring this up THEN?
The second doesn’t impress me a whole lot, I mean, I know a quarter point is big money over 30 years but I want to get this damn thing over with, and maybe we can refinance in a few years.
So I said, well, I need to ask my wife and we will get back to you.
I called Sally and I thought Eyjafjallajokull had erupted again. I could smell brimstone through the phone. I said, well, why don’t you call him and see if he can explain it better. So she did.
She called me back later and was absolutely fuming. She said, “You know why we can’t close tonight?”
I said other than what we already know, what?
She said, “He finally admitted that the FHA appraiser STILL hasn’t filed his report, and it has to be a full walk-through, the FHA doesn’t do drive-bys.”
To fully understand why this was the last fucking straw, we have been bugging him about this appraisal for over a month.
At that point in her conversation with the loan officer, she went into full bitch mode and told him that if she did not have the restated loan papers in her hands by noon tomorrow (via fax), at 12:01PM she was going to call his boss and demand the full Salome treatment, and that if we did not close by next Thursday, there was an excellent chance that they were going to lose our business and we would take it elsewhere (to our own bank; the lender bank is my mother’s bank, not ours).
And that is how it stands right now. We shall see what we shall see.
FWIW I will name the bank when this is over. I am so damn mad right now I almost can’t see straight. Or maybe that’s the Scotch.
“I want your heart — roasted — on a spit.”
Lemme guess, is the FHA guy a government employee?
Well sure. Or a contractor. Either way, the gov is paying him.
I told Sally this morning that when I told her what was up, I felt like Bill Cosby in that sketch about giving his kids chocolate cake for breakfast when his wife came down and found out what was going on: “Her face split.”
We got an FHA mortgage 11 months ago. I think there was only one appraisal done on our property. This was just after a rule change. For the last year, the lender can no longer hire the appraiser directly. The lender now hires an appraisal service who hires the appraiser. This was done to cut down on appraisal fraud. It also means that the lender can’t just fire the appraiser and go get another one if they don’t do their work in a timely fashion. It also means the lender can’t even threaten not to use that appraiser if they don’t to their work in a timely fashion.
I don’t think an FHA mortgage requires an additional appraisal, although it may add additional requirements to the appraisal.
Well, right. He kept telling us that he kept going to the FHA website to request the appraisal. The problem was that they never got around to doing it. And the way things are going right now, I’m not so sure I’m not being told a story about the repeated requests.
I told this guy once before that he really didn’t want to piss my wife off. I guess he did not take the warning to heart.
BTW, in case Bobbie comes around and reads this, I should note that we are not dealing with the same large uncaring banking institution she deals with. This is a completely different large uncaring banking institution.
I’m glad I’ll be writing a check for my next home and skipping the bullshit as I won’t miss it.
In other thoughts, “Dad is great! He gives us chocolate cake!”
Yeah. And, “my children lied on me.”
Amazing what an ass-kicking can do. The appraiser suddenly called today and we set it for next Wednesday morning. Closing is now set for May 17.
I wonder how much Sally’s tirade yesterday contributed to our loan officer actually doing something for a change.
I see a salutary lesson here. That is, in business and politics, it pays to — to borrow a phrase from Top Gun — “go to guns” early.
Pussillanimity gets you nowhere.
M