We are closing on Monday. I’m bummed we aren’t closing early (before the weekend nonetheless), but we have a closing date and time. It’s great to be able to FINALLY make plans. We were able to set up our utilities, and Cox was able to get us in Monday afternoon, so we’ll have internet in no time! I love multi-tasking a good day off. We still need to reserve our moving truck and then we are good to go. The apartment is probably 30% packed, but we’re very confident this will be taken care of soon, once we get rollin’ we tend to go until we finish, but we’re always slow to get it together. I will be posting our moving tips soon too (since we don’t plan to move for the foreseeable future, maybe our tips can help you now?).
So how has the house buying process been? Well, in short, very frustrating. Now, I don’t know anyone who has bought a house and called it an easy experience, but I wasn’t prepared for it to be this painful! As I’ve already alluded, instead of the customary 24 hour response, Freddie Mac had longer to respond than a normal seller would. The differences between buying a foreclosure and a normal house sale really started there. We had an accepted verbal offer, and it took an additional 10 days to receive the signed purchase agreement from the Freddie Mac representative. This held up our entire mortgage process. Once we had this, we were able to do our housing inspection, but then we were stuck again waiting on paperwork to complete the appraisal. After our Mortgage Broker was able to get what he needed, the appraiser went out to take a look.
The great news is that our house appraised for over what we paid for it, the bad news is that when the appraiser was there the water was off, so we had to wait, get the water turned on and then have the appraiser head back to give his final sign-off. We were going with an FHA loan, so there are more standards that have to be met than with a conventional loan. Luckily, our house passed the FHA appraisal.
Next up, a LOT of waiting. We had to provide a lot of extra documentation for the underwriter, which we did as promptly as we could. Then, our closing came down to 2 items. 1) in Nebraska foreclosed houses have to be posted in the paper, so we needed to wait for the proof that this had taken place (and no, I could provide the proof, though I did offer to sort through library newspaper archives to speed the process along) and 2) a copy that they had received and cashed our earnest deposit check. UGH! the good news is, all hurdles have been cleared and we are set to get the keys to our new house!
For fun, we brainstormed our potential projects list for the new house, and man, we have a lot of good stuff coming up. I’m excited to get started! (though as Hubs continually reminds me, these things all take time…) :-)
In honor of our upcoming closing, my good friend Morgan sent us a house warming gift. What you ask? A gorgeous purple orchid! I love it and can already picture it in our new house (I know exactly where it’s going to go, but you’ll have to wait to find out!) 
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