Housing Saga: Part XVII

Read the rest of the Housing Saga here.

Today, almost six months after originally placing a contract on this home:

I officially own it!  Well, the bank officially owns it, but they're letting me live there.  Well, I can't live there yet, because I don't have an occupancy permit.  I also don't have any plumbing, or any electricity.  But I don't care - it's finally my house!!

Just like the rest of the experience, nothing about the closing today was easy.  The three and a half hour event started off with me sitting at the title company at the appointed closing time, and overhearing some employees saying "there's no way they're going to be able to close - we still don't have the wire transfer from the lender!" I just knew they were talking about me.  Sure enough, a few minutes later, my realtor called and said there was a problem.  Apparently the "HUD" - the closing paperwork - had been written incorrectly, and the lender was holding the loan hostage by refusing to send the wire transfer until it was corrected.  E-mails were flying and things got a bit heated.  I waited patiently and wished I'd taken bets from my friends who were sure I'd close today.  Then we had good news.  They had re-written the HUD, and I just had to go to the bank and wire another $1100.00 to the title company, and then we would be good.  So to the bank I went, an hour after our official closing time, and the money was wired.  I returned to the title company and continued waiting.  Finally we started signing paperwork, only to learn that the final numbers STILL weren't right, and I needed to pay another $165.00.  No one was sure why I had to pay this at first, but I said I really didn't care, I would consider it a "nightmare tax" - a fee to end this nightmare of not being able to close on this house.  So I paid the nightmare tax, and before I knew it, all the hundreds of pieces of paper had been signed and they said we were done.  They had no keys to give me - it's a HUD foreclosure and needs all new locks - but I had a folder full of papers that supposedly said that I owed the bank a whole lot of money, and that I was the owner of a little log cabin in a rural little town in Missouri.

The list of things that need to be done to make this house livable is a mile long.  But I own the house now, and I can finally start working on that list!  I only need to look at my foster puppies, and at all the other puppies and dogs that I want to help in the future, to know that this whole headache of trying to buy this home has been well worth it.