Happy Houseiversary!

Do y'all watch those shows on HGTV, like House Hunters or Property Virgins, where they look at 3 houses, choose one, make an offer and close in the tidy span of a half hour? And how excited they are, sitting in a room with everyone together: Realtor, lawyers, previous owners, the law office janitor, your Mom, several former boyfriends and the stray dog down the street?

How there are never any problems closing or financing?

How the television crew goes back a month later and the house is in perfect order, not a box in sight?

That.

Is.

MALARKEY.

Our sweet little house with the landscaping we put it!

You know what came and went without me even making a peep about it on this here blog OR Twitter? Our first Houseiversary! KLZ is getting ready for her new place and it reminded me. One year ago, on August 7, we closed on our new home. But the story begins much earlier in the year, around May 2009....

[ wavy lines representing going back in time in my mind ]

Hubby and I decided it was time to start house hunting. We wanted to put down some roots and that little $8k government stimulus was burning a hole in our pockets. Plus, we were getting tired of apartment living, what with the people stomping around above us and the lack of parking. We started to look online at the Reality sites and then a couple months later got a  Realtor.

Ok, so this Realtor. We didn't know how to go about finding one, so Hub asked one of his friends, who suggested this guy. He went to the same church we did so we thought, oh, he's probably nice and will do a good job. WRONG. He was a bumbling idiot. I felt like I was in an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond or something because this guy was unbelievable. His name was JR and he typically sold farm land and commercial real estate, but was "nice enough" to help out us newbie property virgins.

Our first meeting with him was interesting. After telling him exactly what we wanted in a home, he told us it sounded like we didn't know, but he'd pull some houses for us from the database. He found a handful and we set up a meeting a few days later to look at them. We met at his office and we all climbed into this huge pick up truck with dog hair EVERYWHERE and headed our our adventure. The first house we saw, we fell in love with. It was just lovely and perfect for us. JR, said he was the type who didn't want to be "pushy", so he just sat down in the living room of this house and made some calls on his Blackberry.

Sat down. On the floor. To make calls.

After a long day of searching, and a couple days of SOUL searching, we decided to make an offer on this house. We met, again, at his office and started drawing up the paperwork. I had a number in mind for what we wanted to offer according to what would fit in our budget, but he started insisting our payment would be more than what we figured it would be. Turns out he was calculating the wrong tax rate. Smart! Oh, and that house? Already had an offer.

Here are some other things he did:

• Didn't answer our phone calls for various reasons, including but not limited to: phone battery died;  showing houses (although we were trying to get a hold of him at a CRITICAL time and he obviously didn't have trouble answering when he was showing houses to us); out tending his cattle; bathroom emergency.
• Couldn't ever get someplace on time, like EVER.
• Teased Hubby ALL the time about everything he did, but in a way where it's not a joke, it's because he is annoyed.
• Told Hubby to sign first because "he's the man of the house". 

The house we bought was on our first list, but too expensive, but after dropping the price considerably we took a second look and fell in love. The house had been on the market for about 4 months with only a handful of showings, but no offers. The day we put an offer in, somehow, because God was trying to teach us a lesson, I guess, three other offers also came in. We bumped up our price a smidge and left for a weekend trip. On the way there, JR called: we got the house! No thanks to him, because while we were biting our nails about our offer, he was napping in his office and wouldn't answer our phone calls.

Then there was our financing. That was the biggest bunch of malarkey known to man. The mortgage broker guy was all, "Oh you guys are in GREAT shape, we'll have this done in no time! Closing date is August 4! Get excited people!" And then he promptly went out of town, leaving us in the "capable" hands of Tyler, who in reality should only have been trusted with things like filing paperwork and making coffee. Tyler screwed us royally by listing the WRONG closing date on our paperwork, then lying that it was the bank's fault. I yelled at him a lot. After the fact, bossman at the brokerage was like, "sorry for your troubles. Here is a gift card!"

So, right, August 5 was our original closing date. Tyler called one day and said it would be moved till the next day. And he continued this again and again until the closing date was August 7 -- but only maybe, if we could get the money transferred in time. Somehow, either the brokerage or the lawyers office was having trouble getting our money (which they had in their hot little hands by the original closing date) to the sellers, who wouldn't give up the keys until then. We were moving out of our apartment August 8. They were moving to Tallahassee August 6. You can see why we were frustrated.

Finally closing was set for 2 pm on August 7. We met JR at the house to take one last walk through before we signed the papers. He pulled out his magic key dispenser thing for the lock box -- and the batteries were dead. Like really, JR,  you're going to pull one more screw up the last day we have to deal with you. Phenomenal. He heads around to the backyard and begins pulling on windows, hoping that one was unlocked. He tried the back door. He was trying to break into our new home!

After getting new batteries, he was able to retrieve the key. He just handed them to us and said, "Oh, you guys can probably just keep these. No reason putting the lock box back." But what about the dramatic "handing over the keys" I saw on Our First Place? I was robbed!

At one point it just started getting comical. We signed our lives away while JR played on his Blackberry, teased Hubby and stole pens from the desk. The lawyer started to fax our paperwork, then came back in a short time later and said a lightening storm earlier in the day had fried their fax machine and they were waiting to get it fixed. Fabulous. After waiting close to 3 hours, we were done, but the final nail in the coffin was that JR had to drive me home in his skunky truck because Hubby had to run to the bank before it closed.

There were no hugs, no tears of joy, no one saying excitedly, "Here are the keys to your new home!" It was all anti-climatic.

So in conclusion, my first real estate experience brought not only a new home, but at least 8 pounds from stress eating. Thank you, JR, for contributing to that stress.

Have you bought a home? Was it as messy as my home buying experience?

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