I wrote awhile back about deciding to purchase sooner than anticipated...well fastforward, I was preapproved earlier this month and have been checking out a bunch of properties and found the one yesterday; the city we want and the school district and at a good price. Not only is it a good fit for us, but in talking to my real estate agent the property values have steadily increased and the potential for further increase is good. After we looked, my agent called the seller's agent to see if anyone else was interested....and of course someone else had already put in an offer that morning, but they were willing to accept more so we submitted an offer so that at least we would be in the race.
I had so much anxiety today! Finally heard back from agent...so the bad news since I'm going FHA the price cannot be above the appraised value 233k the previous buyer under contract earlier this month was also FHA and backed out for that reason. So I was posed with having to pay 5k in addition to down payment + closing cost to get the loan amout down to the appraisal value. The other alternative was to go conventional...but not enough time to pay something down get a rapid rescore in hopes of getting the score necessary all before another buyer makes an offer. So we decided ok....not ideal, but this property at this price is a good deal (seller wants the listed price).
Here's where it got even more dicey...our apartment lease isn't up until July so it would have worked out that we would have ended up with paying mortgage and rent both for 1 month; this is based off standard timelines per my agent. The seller comes back and says I want to close by the end of March!! My agent was aware of our lease issue so he said well sure we'll close by March but you've got to knock $1500 off the price (1 months rent)...the seller comes back with I'll lower it $750. Grrr...then the issue came with whether or not my lender can even close that quickly...luckily he can.
I'm still waiting on revised documents to sign with final agreed upon price, so not completely final yet...but I'm going to have an anxiety attack! I never really got why people were so crazy when buying a home. But I think I get it now....and it's all happening sooo fast, and we're talking a pretty penny since the seller isn't contributing anything to closing costs. I don't know how I'm gonna make it to the end of the month.
On one hand I'm excited and the other I'm completely scared that I've just agreed to probably be out of 20k when it's all said and done...yikes!
I'll try to update as I go throught this process.
Agreed.
Signed contract last night, and just turned in earnest money a few hours ago. Now working on trying to get an inspection scheduled ASAP.
One thing I was worried about is that I've been traveling a lot lately for work, and I normally charge everything and pay it off once I get reimbursed from my job. Sometimes that might mean I only pay the minimum if the bill is due before I get reimbursed...but I checked with my loan officer and he said that he wouldn't be pulling credit again before we close so he said don't worry about any changes on my credit report. So that's good!
The only other thing I can think of that I'm worried about whether or not to even bring up is...I got an invoice from the IRS saying there was an error on a previous year tax return. I had been investigating it with some tax specialists and have been made aware that yes there was an error that results in a 3k penalty to be paid to IRS. I have until 3/5 to respond to IRS....and I can submit a payment or they will mail you a bill and you can get on a payment plan. Yes I could pay it upfront and still have enough for everything including reserves....but with all the money I will be spending at the end of the month I'd rather do the payment plan so that I could space it out. I don't even know what's the turnaround time for the IRS...I might not get a bill before we close. If they're not pulling credit again would this even come up? Would they be able to find out about this from anything else they would gather during closing?
Thanks! You're right, ultimately I think I will let my LO know Monday what's going on, and what he would advise if it even matters. I've got a short window to close so I definitely don't need any surprises along the way....want this to be as seamless a process as it could be.
Seems like stuff like this isn't as uncommon as I thought I saw several other people write about tax concerns, and I asked questions there as well. So I will see what other poeple's experience has been as well.
Otherwise we're still tackling things to be done....inspection scheduled for Monday!
Another update....
Spoke to LO about tax concerns, and he said although he asked me for 3 years worth of tax documents he only needs 2 so we will use 2012 and my recently filed 2013 (filed after I initially went through pre-approval); the error is from 2011 so he said we should still be fine. Whew!
He just received the signed contract from my realtor today so he is going to update all of my loan docs with the correct information and he said it should be ready for my review at some point tomorrow morning.
Like most of the country...the weather has been nasty here the last two days so we didn't do the inspection today; it'll take place on Wednesday.
I received some information from the title company and who the representative is for the escrow account.
They asked for some stuff that I don't have yet or honestly don't even know what it is....insurance information, loan number, will this be a homestead (?).
When in the process did you start getting homeowners insurance quotes? And after googling...seems like homestead is protection for spouse if other spouse dies and some other tax stuff...I'm not married...so can homestead even apply?
I'm at the same place in the timeline. Offered accepted Friday, meeting LO tomorrow, inspection Wednesday. Close is scheduled for 4/15 at the moment.
I'll be following your thread. Do they pull your credit for homeowners insurance? I was going to get a quote from progressive (also have my car insurance through them) but they mentioned someting that sounded like they were going to pull my credit.
Good luck! 