Feb 05 2009
Escrow Saga….
I wrote about the inspection we had on the house and things got really busy after that with the holidays and escrow closing so I did not get a chance to write about the escrow process. We had a really short escrow for this house. Both houses we have bought have had short escrows but this one we really pushed to be short because we were trying to take advantage of the time off we would have during the holidays to kick off the remodeling at the new house. One thing we learned was that banks are really slooooow. They take forever to respond to questions or requests. It felt like pulling teeth trying to get them to respond back to things. We we were pushing to close by December 29. We did not close until January 2. Our loan was lined up, we had everything ready. The holidays slowed us down a bit because everything shut down and most people were not really into working the day before or after the holiday even though it was a work day. We took possession of the house and the termite people still had all the rotten wood piled up in the back yard. They did come back and clean it up. People have asked me if I would buy a bank owned house again. After some thought and discussion on the subject, I think we are both in agreement we would buy a bank owned house again. Would we buy during the holidays again? Maybe not. There was a lot of stuff going on that added to the stress level. But you can never tell when you will find that house you want to put a bid on. The home buying process has definitely made it less emotional for me. But I do not think we we were ever the type to fall in love with a certain house right off the bat. We tried to go in to it as a business transaction and then after we had decided that we liked the bones and structure of the house and that it would fit in it, only then did we start picturing ourselves in the house. Once we did that the emotions started coming in to play. We were ready to walk away from this house right up to the last minute. Not because we did not like it. By then we were already emotionally involved in it. We were ready to walk away because we were not getting any responses back from the banks. In the end it turned out in our favor and we have been spending every waking minute fixing it up.
