Housing Update

I only write about this because it's the biggest thing in my life right now ... and because I know that somtimes it's cool to read about the day-to-day process of this kind of thing instead of just hearing "Oh, it went fine." So, if this bores you, skip ahead to ... well, it's all rather boring isn't it? :)

The sellers are finally signing the Purchase & Sales Agreement today with their attorneys. Assuming nothing goes wrong with that, they'll be getting that to us and our attorneys quickly. This will enable us to fax it to Wells Fargo and lock in the interest rate. It also gives me enough confirmation that this will go through that I will feel comfortable contacting our landlady and giving our 30-day notice to vacate. I'll make that phone call and then follow up with a written letter.

I also received yesterday Wells Fargo's "Commitment Letter." This is their promise to loan us the money for the house assuming certain things are true. We need our attorneys to have this by Oct 31 in order to satisfy the conditions of the Purcahse & Sales, so it feels good to have it in my hands. I asked them to fax a copy to our attorneys. I'll call them tomorrow and verify that they received it.

An interesting note about how this works -- basically when we applied for the mortgage, we gave them a bunch of numbers about our financial situation. Average bank account balances, salary information, and retirement account balance, specifically. Well, the commitment letter spells out that they need proof of those exact numbers. This was a little shocking -- I expected, for example, for them to require proof that I was over (X) where (X) is some number less than my actual salary. But they evidently need exact proof.

This, of course, caused our first true panic. Our current bank balance is about half of what we claimed as our average throughout the past year. We'll be well over that figure by the time the loan closes, but my last printed statement shows the much smaller number. I called Wells Fargo this morning and spoke to the woman actually handling the loan (Amber ... Dawn handled the application process, Amber the actual loan ... is there something about mortgage reps' names?). She was just as personable as the last one I dealt with and assured me that everything would be fine. I'll fax her the statement showing less than the amount claimed as well as the income and 401K statements and if that isn't satisfactory they'll ask for more.

I keep forgetting the cardinal rule here -- they want to loan me this money. They'll look for excuses to loan me this money. Of course, they may charge me higher rates and bigger fees if I screw this stuff up, but it's highly unlikely I'd screw it up enough to lose the loan.

deep breath

So, yeah. Lots of excitement. Tomorrow the adventures in faxing begin. I'll be sending them:

• 2004 W2
• My last pay stub
• Last month's bank statement (with balance = 1/2 claimed average)
• Online statement printout from 401k (actual printed copy to come from Fidelity within 5 business days)

I also am supposed to talk to someone from Liberty Mutual tomorrow about homeowner's insurance too. This stuff never ends, FYI.