We Weathered Fay

Can you believe that a tropical storm was predicted to make landfall right where I was planning to vacation? Yeah, me neither. Tropical Storm Fay was making its way up the gulf side of Florida at the same time I was going to be in Tampa. Well, technically I was at Indian Shores / Indian Rock Beach. I flew down Friday night and we drove over to the beach on Saturday morning. Me and a few other girls were staying at a timeshare there. We kept our eye on the storm. Actually all we watched on TV was either weather or the Olympics. Surprisingly, Fay turned inland before it hit us. What's pretty funny is that it headed right for our new house. Uh-huh. Ben got to the house on Sunday. It rained for like 5 days straight. We said it was a good test for our house to see if there were any leaks or anything else not quite right. Ben did find a small leak in the garage. All this while us girls were nice and dry on the gulf. We did get some rain and wind, but nothing too scary. There was one evening when the sky was all purple. It was so pretty. Ben purchased all the appliances already. Fridge, stove, microwave, dishwasher, washing machine and dryer. He would take pics with his phone and send them to me so we could decide. He made great selections. So now at least he has a fridge and microwave at the house. The other appliances aren't in place yet. He also picked up a used TV on Craig's list. He took the inflatable frame bed, a folding chair, some linens etc... He's got a cute "bachelor pad" set up for himself. He has the cable and internet hooked up too. The drywall guy is done with his work so I got to see the walls all nicely repaired. I can't wait to see everything finished. It is gonna be sooo sweet! I got back to MD earlier tonight. I was so sad to leave my Ben in Florida. It will be weird to be here without him. Thank goodness for cell phones and skype! On a lighter note, I had a really great vaca. It was a "Shopbooking Adventure". We even had shirts that said so. :) (Thanks D!) Basically, we shopped for scrapbooking supplies during the day (ALL day!) and scrapbooked at night. It was so much fun! I met a couple of new gals on the trip too that are too much fun! It was great! Now I guess I better really start planning how I'm going to pack up this house. Oh, and if you are reading this, please keep your fingers crossed (and maybe say a little prayer for me) that this house gets sold, and FAST!

It's Really Ours?!

Ben spoke to the girl at the title company while I was home at lunch. She said it was done. It's official! We own the house in Florida!

Really? For sure? No other unforseen snags, road blocks, or foolishness?? Seriously? Can you hear the skepticism in my voice?! Yeah. After all this mayhem I need absolute proof. She said the auction was called off for tomorrow. So I guess that's a good sign. I'm still not doing cartwheels yet. I think I'm afraid to get excited. We've been through so many ups and downs lately. Every time we would get excited about it, some other ugly monster would pop it's head up. We never gave up though. We figure, if we try as hard as we can, and we still don't get the house, well than at least we went down swinging.

Have I mentioned that we've already got all the colors picked out to paint the interior? Yep! And we've already chosen the ceiling fans, and flooring. We are ready to go! We've got a drywall guy coming in next Thursday to start with the wall repair. Ben will be driving down on Saturday to oversee the work and do the painting and moldings. He will probably spend about a month there by himself getting it all in tip-top shape. We have a pool guy coming too to get the pool repaired and usable (it needs a new liner and pump). Ben will still work his regular job during the day and then work on the house at night. So what will I be doing while he's not here? (boohoo) I will be packing up the rest of the house in Maryland, and still working at my job. Ben will fly back to Maryland for about 2 weeks, in which we will get the final preparations done for the move. Then we'll get a moving van, pack the truck and off we'll head into the sunset, with visions of palm trees dancing in our heads. teehee I'm getting all tingly just thinking about it. Dare I let myself get excited about it? Hell yeah!

Day of Closing

Since we are all the way in Maryland, and the house is in Florida, we decided to just use fedex/ups/dhl to communicate back and forth. We got the mortgage papers in, signed, and sent back out in the same day. That was Thursday. We were expecting the house closing papers the next day. Well guess what, another snag. (oh big surprise). The appraisal wasn't done in time. They had to be sent electronically at the end of Friday. They wanted us to sign them, get them notarized and sent back on Saturday. Umm....yeah, we would be glad to do so, except there is no Saturday pick-up here. No Saturday pick-up within a 2 hour drive! I asked why they couldn't just be sent back electronically as well, but I guess they need to have the actual notary seal. Well, the only thing we can do is send them out Monday to be delivered by 8:30 am on Tuesday, the day of closing. We ran to the bank Monday morning to get the notary and our certified check for the closing. Took it back home, and scanned it in for our own copy. Then ups'd it out, red flag to be there by 8:30 am. It's out of our hands now. Ben is tracking the package. Tuesday, 7:45 am, they try to deliver it, but the title company doesn't open until 8:00. Ok. No biggie. The title company girl we are working with is tracking it too. She saw that they tried to deliver it too. She emails us that she is keeping her eyes out for the ups guy. I'm sitting there in Ben's office, having my breakfast before work. All of a sudden he says, "Oh no....noooooo!" The tracking says it will attempt to re-deliver tomorrow! NO! Please no, tomorrow is too late! It will be on the auction block tomorrow! Oh Lord. He tries calling ups customer service. They are of no help. They won't even give us the phone number for the distribution center that the package left from. He's telling the girl that we will lose a house if that package doesn't get there today! We're thinking if we could call them at the distribution center, there's got to be a way to contact the driver and send him back!!! I'm making calls trying to get a number. Ben is looking online trying to find one too. Wait, I'm sick, I run to the bathroom. I can't take anymore of this! I am physically ill again. Not good. We are freaking out! All of a sudden, Ben gets an email from the title company. She got the package. huh? Ben calls her to verify. Yep. She got it. Oh thank God! I just break into tears. I really can't take much more. Neither can Ben. We're relieved, but we are still waiting for something else to happen. We won't actually believe the house is ours until we have the title in hand.

The Saga goes on...

We were finally getting bits and pieces of information. The insurance company's estimate was only about $13,000. That sounded low. We needed to get down there and see it for ourself. We flew down there at the end of June, before our July 11th closing date, to decide if we still wanted to close on the house. It was hard. I didn't even know if I wanted to see it. I was afraid I would just break into tears. Ben saw it first, then I went the next day. It wasn't as bad as I had imagined. The biggest thing was that there was no flooring, just a concrete slab. It wasn't pretty, but it wasn't horrible either. There were some holes in the drywall where ServPro had to insert their dehydrators. As I mentioned earlier, the walls of the laundry room were destroyed. But after careful inspection, we still decided it was cosmetic and definitely repairable. We had people come to give us estimates for flooring and repairs too. We wanted to know a ballpark figure of what it would actually cost to repair. It was, of course more than the insurance company's estimate. Plus, we needed these estimates for a worksheet for the 203k mortgage. We felt more prepared, more knowledgeable. We didn't want anyone trying to screw us over or feel like they could take advantage of us because we were all they way in Maryland. But it was all still a waiting game. The mitigators from our realty company were asking for $25,000 toward repair. Insurance adjustor only quoted $13,000. I would jokingly say we needed compensation for mental anguish too! haha Seriously though, Ben and I were both so frustrated, stressed, and physically ill over all this. I thought I was developing an ulcer.

Ben would search for other homes for sale in case this all didn't work out. One day in his search he saw our house....scheduled for auction....on August 13th!! Yep, unbelievable right? The bank had the time to set up the auction for the house but couldn't make a damn decision for us! Ben immediately called our realtor (who is an angel in disguise, I must add) and she had no knowledge of it, but assured us not to worry, that it only takes a phone call to remove it from the auction roster. Ok so get this. We FINALLY get word July 29th that they agreed to $23,000. Ben is excited, I am still skeptical (can you blame me at this point?) because we don't have it in writing yet. We don't get the "official" papers until August 1st. They also tell us that they want to close on August 12th. Ok, let's talk to our 203k mortgage girl and see if we can do it. Afterall, she had most of the application finished... Well, of course that's not enough time to finish the paperwork. Quick, ask if the bank will grant us an extension of 2 more weeks. Waiting.... Waiting.... Nope, no extension. We close on the 12th or no deal. I'm infuriated by this because we sat around and waited for sooo long for them to make a decision, and then they can't even grant us 2 more weeks? I was so pissed off! I felt like they would rather just go to auction because at this point they would probably make more $ from it at auction, even in the state it's in.

So now what? Can't get a conventional mortgage, can't get the 203k. What do we do? Well, we ended up getting approved for a private mortgage from the owner of our realty company. We were able to do it quickly, and the mortgage payments ended up being about the same...the same as the 203k and the same as we pay right now. Can you believe that? A bigger, newer house in Florida for about the same mortgage that we pay right now. Cool!

And the Saga goes on...

Well, since July 11th came and went, we just had to guess that there was another extension, though nothing official was said. We found out later that if we didn't have the house under contract, the bank probably wouldn't have even considered trying to salvage it. It just would have sat with all that water damage. And then who would want it? So in a sense, our contract saved the house from total ruin. At the time, there were so many houses in short sale, pre-foreclosure and foreclosure that the banks just didn't want to bother with more problems from them. You would think that they would want to just get rid of this property already, but still they dragged their feet. We were in a sort of "stalled state" or "limbo". We couldn't pursue another house since we were still under contract. But nothing was going forward either.

Somewhere in the middle of all that "nothing," we found out we couldn't get a conventional mortgage, which we were previously approved for....WHAT? Oh you have got to be kidding! Don't really understand how that all worked, or rather didn't work. We have really good credit and little debt. First it seemed like the mortgage company thought Ben was self-employed since he was working from home. We solved that issue with proof that he is not self-employed, but then there was some other excuse, like he has been with the company for only a short time. I swear it felt like they were looking for any excuse not to give us a mortgage. And it's not like we wanted some ridiculous one either, we just wanted a normal conventional 30 year. We're not stupid enough to fall for an ARM! duh. I guess with all the people that are in trouble with those kinds of mortgages (amongst trying to flip or live beyond their means) it was getting tougher and tougher to get even a regular mortgage. Ok. Let's not panic. Ben started doing research and he found some sort of government mortgage called a 203k. It was perfect for us because it helps people buy houses that need to be fixed up but don't have the up front cash to fix it. This was an option if the bank wanted to go the route of reducing the price of the house by how much was needed for the repairs. It had its pros and cons. We worked with that mortgage as far as we could go. Obviously, since we still didn't know what the bank's decision was, we couldn't actually put a mortgage amount on it. We just needed to know what the bank would do: either reduce the cost of the house, or give us a check for the repairs at closing. It was obvious that they weren't going to have it fixed for us since we already passed the second closing date of July 11th. And that was fine, because we could then choose our own flooring etc. But we were ready, or so we thought.

Saga...continuation

A friend of ours who lives down there decides to call ServPro to get an estimate, at least and find out how soon they can start to clean it up. We're thinking a few hundred dollars, right? Wrong! When all was said and done, their bill alone was $9,000. Yep you read that right, nine thousand dollars!!! And that didn't even include any of the repairs to the flooring, drywall etc... In the midst of this, our realtor found out that the bank had insurance on the house (as they were supposed to) and their insurance would take care of it. And are you wondering what happened with the water company? Well, the story we got was that no, they did not contact our realtor as requested, they turned the water on at the street and at the house, let the meter run for 6 minutes and saw that there was movement so shut the water off at the house and supposedly left a note on the front door. Well, our realtor found no note and obviously the water was left running. Needless to say, the water company is now being sued. So sad that all of this could have been avoided with one simple phone call. Two minutes (at the most) out of someone's day could have saved us all this headache and stress. Unbelievable.

So, the ServPro guys did a great job. They started the very next day. As expected all the carpeting and laminate wood flooring had to be removed. Yep, 2,300 sq ft of flooring - gone. We had our friend go over and take photos of all the mess and damage. We needed to know what was going on and how bad it was. ServPro used 3 or 4 giant dehydrators, removed flooring, moldings, and dry wall. It took them about 5 days to get it all done. Oh by the way, the "leak" was in the laundry room. The washer hook-up was turned on to full blast, and about 2 whole walls of the laundry room were taken down. Just so you get an idea, when the ServPro guys began the job, the humidity in the house was close to 90%. Normal home humidity is between 30% - 40%. When ServPro finished, the humidity level was at 25%. They extrapulated so much water. Wow.

Needless to say we are distressed over the situation. Obviously, we can't settle on June 11th. They extend the closing to July 11th. Ok, that's fine. We just want the house fixed before we move in. The insurance appraiser went through and did his thing. But then his report had to be approved by his supervisor. Time dragged on. We were getting no news. Nothing. We also had mitigators from our realty company working on our behalf as well (thank goodness). July 11th came and went, and still we heard nothing. Not a peep from these people. It was very frustrating.

The FL House Saga Begins...

Ok so as you can see, our last post was in May, when our bid was accepted for the house in Florida. We were so excited. We were all ready to close on June 11th. Then, the saga began..... I haven't even blogged about it because it was too upsetting, and very confusing! Let's not forget that we are in Maryland right now, and the house is in Florida.

About a week before we went to closing, we had the water and electric turned on for inspection, among other things. We even had the cable guy scheduled to come the following week. We asked the water company to please contact our realtor so she could drive over to the house to make sure there were no leaks. First day, water company goes over to the house without calling our realtor, turns the water on, sees the meter running, shuts it off and leaves. We are all wondering what's going on because we hadn't got a call and it was getting late in the day. Ben calls and gets that story. He asks again to have them go back the next day and please call our realtor because she cleared her schedule just to do this. Next day, again no call. We find out that the water company was there, turned it on again, saw the meter running again (as expected, duh) and turned it off at the house. Or so he said. Our realtor goes over the next morning and finds the whole house flooded! Literally, water was running out the front door. We get the call a little after 10 AM. Ben calls me at work. I am livid! I'm about ready to scream. We had no idea what to do because it was a very strange situation: we had it under contract, but the bank still owned it since we didn't settle yet. So who takes care of this? Who's pocket does this come out of? Something needed to be done immediately....water damage in a Florida house....ummm...we need to get this dried out ASAP so mold doesn't grow!