Home-Buying, Finale

Our new house!

It’s done; we own a house!  And it all came down to a last-minute 1.5-mile bike ride through suburban Minneapolis.

Oh yes – I’m serious.  It’s been nearly a month since my last post on home buying, but that’s because not much happened until yesterday.  In the three weeks until yesterday, all we’d been doing was randomly stopping in Home Depots and Lowe’s to check out carpet, laminate, paint colors and types, and so on; we picked a carpet and a brand of laminate.  We also found homeowner’s insurance, which is surprisingly difficult when you live anywhere vaguely close to coastal area.  We are technically 1500 feet from a bay that attaches to the Atlantic and about 8 miles from the beach, which apparently makes us a “hurricane risk.”  One insurer outright told us that they were unwilling to insure us.  But we eventually found one, and everything related to the loan and closing was taken care of on our end over a week ago.

After doing that, as there wasn’t much left for us to do, we just waited.  So by yesterday, we started to wonder if we were really going to close on this house on time.  The sellers were supposed to do repairs, which it didn’t look like they had done.  We also had never been given instructions on where to send our down payment, so no money had changed hands.

Then yesterday, our loan officer e-mails us our settlement statement – the final summary of our loan – with the April 30 closing date.  Surprise!  I also learned a little more detail on where closing costs go; the statement lists around 15 distinct parties receiving money as a result of this sale.  It was also a bit of a surprise to learn that our closing costs were $1000 greater than our good faith estimate had indicated they would be.

Of course, at this point, it was too late to send a check – we got the statement at 11PM the day before closing, so we obviously couldn’t mail a check that would arrive in time.  No problem – we’ll just do a wire transfer tomorrow.

I wake up this morning to find my wife telling me that I have to initiate the wire transfer as soon as possible, only minutes before she walks out the door to head to work.  She’d just received a call that the closing was scheduled 3 hours later, and wire transfers, according to the company handling our title, take up to 2 hours to go through.  Annoying, but no problem, I think.  I’ll just call the bank and initiate the transfer.   I sit on hold for 20 minutes and finally get a bank representative.  “I’d like to initiate a wire transfer,” I say.

To which the representative replies, “You can only initiate wire transfers at a branch office.”  The problem is that at this point, it’s 2.5 hours until closing, the transfer will take 2 hours, and my wife has the car at work, where she is actively lecturing for at least an hour.  My scooter is also non-functional; we are missing a bolt/nut combo that apparently allows the entire thing to turn on.  So what option did I have left?  That’s right – the bike.

Not having biked since last fall (it’s still cold in Minneapolis in April), I hunted down the bike pump in a closet, pulled the bike from where it was stored, filled the tires to 70PSI, and 2 hours and 10 minutes before closing, took off down suburban Minneapolis streets for the local branch office 1.5 miles away.  7 minutes later (averaging 13 mph over 18 blocks, including several stop lights and signs!), I arrive panting at the branch office.  I sit down with the manager, hand her my ID, give her the routing and account numbers for the title company, and initiate the transfer.  Crisis averted, and only a minute or two late.

After a much deserved break at D’Amico & Sons, I bike back more slowly and arrive home about an hour after I initiated the transfer.  And look – in my e-mail, a message from the loan officer that the wire transfer had been received 15 minutes ago and all was well.  Fantastic.  Nothing like an unnecessary sense of urgency to get the adrenaline moving.

And finally, after all of this, it was quiet.  No messages, no phone calls.  Nothing.  Two hours of silence after our closing supposedly occurred, I receive an e-mail with the subject “Congratulations are in order.”  Finally, we are homeowners.  And it is a process that I hope I never have to go through again!