Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup.........or the house closing

I wish we still lived in the days when you could drive someplace out West....look around......see a nice plot of land and say, "This here is mine".........and build a house.   So easy.   Yes, backbreakingly hard to clear the land and physically build your own house, but so much easier on the psyche.

Now, you have to start out with the Real Estate Agent.   Sure you can try to buy a house without one, but it ain't easy.  

Actually, you have to start with the Pre-Approval.   So we get the bank involved right at the beginning.  With Pre-Approval in hand, you have a better shot at getting an offer accepted.

When you find the house of your dreams, your Real Estate Agent has to negotiate with their Real Estate Agent. And you can't just sit at a table or call on the phone and do like American Pickers - "What are you thinking on this house?   180K?  How about 160K?"    the other guy says, "That's a little low.  I could do 175K."   

No, you have to fill out 2 hours of paperwork for a P and S (Purchase and Sale agreement), sign it and initial it in 57 places, then fax it to them, they make the counter-offer, with more initials and signatures - back and forth and back and forth until you're dizzy.

Now the fun begins.  You have to have the Home Inspector come in.........and wait for his report with baited breath.   Is the house in good shape?  Will he say it's got big problems?    His report has to get to the bank.

Then you visit the Mortgage Broker at the bank.  Another 2 hours of paperwork to fill out.   She actually said to me, "We'll walk you right through this like a dream."   HA!

Then the Assessor has to check the house out.   And make the Real Estate Agent go over there to take ONE picture inside the house.   He loved that.

There's the call to the Insurance Company for a binder, and the sincere hope that the information somehow makes it to the bank.

In between all this, you have to deal with the other side of the coin, which is the sale of the condo.  Condos are even more involved to sell than houses, because you have numerous calls to the condo board, a 1 1/2 drive to get paperwork, which cost us $75 and which I'm pretty sure they didn't give us everything we needed.

Right now, three days before our supposed closing, we are still waiting for a closing appointment.   The lawyer for the house closing called and said she got the OK To Close from our bank.   Hurray!

BUT......we can't schedule our closing for the house until we have a closing time for the condo.   So I called the lawyer's office for the condo closing (of COURSE it's not the same lawyer!)   and she said she's waiting for the Condo Buyer's mortgage company to give them the OK To Close.

What's holding them up?   Who knows!!  SHE doesn't know.  She told me I just have to wait until she hears from them!   UH UH!!   Nope!

I called my Real Estate Agent, who will call the Condo Buyer's Real Estate Agent, who will call the Condo Buyer, who will call his Mortgage Company, who will hopefully call his Lawyer's Office and give the OK To Close.

Got that?  Me neither.