CONFESSIONS PART VI: GETTING CLOSER

What an exciting week it's been, cats and kittens! Actually, wait, strike that -- no it hasn't. It's been a week full of phone calls and waiting. The foofaraw that occurred last weekend is passed; after an e-mail to Lorri full of hurt feelings and gentle recrimination, the full story was made clear: The lender balked at writing a loan for anything above the appraised value (X+$3K, remember?) and the seller balked at selling for anything lower than the original agreed-upon price (X). So the only place that some ducats could be shaved were off the costs that were rolled in for the closing (that's the $3K). When it was finally explained, the course of action was obvious: sign the addendum or forego the house entirely. The "forego" option was understressed (to the point of not being mentioned at all, really) and probably wouldn't have been considered but it would have been nice at the time to know our available paths of action.

I took the loan from my 401k this week. Submitted the request on Tuesday and was supposed to receive a document to sign and return via Fax on Wednesday. Nothing arrived and so I phoned on Thursday. "Oh, isn't that funny?" they said. "It should have been faxed. Here, we'll do it again." And lo, it came to pass that 4 hours later, I faxed back a fully-signed promissory note. By Friday, the money had been removed from my account and it had been given to FedEx for delivery. The lender must be monitoring my accounts, because by Friday evening, I had an e-mail from Joe, our mortgage guy. The lack of funds had been noted as being missing from the 401k, and they needed to see it available in a liquid-funds account. I had asked if Suntrust (keepers of my old age solvency) could do a direct-transfer into our checking account, but no, that option isn't available for loans. Go figure.

We're all ready for the close that is scheduled - in theory - for 8/25. The last document we need to provide is a Bondage Letter from an insurance company. No, wait, that doesn't sound right. Something like that, anyway. And so we've been shopping around for insurance quotes. Turns out we need a 4-point inspection because our house is an older one. We also need a Wind Mitigation inspection. Actually that one's optional, but it can save us hundreds, and only costs $75. This lets the insurance company know if the roof is hurricane-ready, if the windows are impact-resistant, if there are storm shutters installed, and so on. And so, after passing $150 to a complete stranger and watching him wiggle into the space between roof and ceiling --

We wait. That was done on Thursday, but we didn't receive a copy of the report on Friday. I know that the inspector is going to send a copy directly to the insurance guy who recommended him (how cozy!), but we've got another couple of agents lined up who are eager to give us quotes.

Without those reports, our annual cost for insurance is going to run $4,400 as a worst-case scenario. That's with a minimal deductible and with full content replacement, etc. Once we get the reports back, we're going to be looking for a quote with a $2500 deductible, standard content replacement, a discount for having a monitored alarm system (there's already one in the house, which helps), et cetera.

And so it goes. Hopefully on Monday, we'll get the reports, bounce them to the other agents, get quotes on Tuesday, make a decision on Wednesday, get the necessary docs by Friday ... And wait for the weekend! Of course, there's many a slip 'twixt cup and lip ...