Delays, Repairs, VA Inspections, and Closing Day Oh My!

Delays, Repairs, VA Inspections, and Closing Day

We were offered the opportunity to purchase our favorite home out of the dozens we saw since we started looking at the beginning of February this year. It was mid-March and hoping to close as soon as humanly possible. We knew that closing in 14 days or less was doable because of the amazing realtor we had in 2019, Bri Godfrey. But, after we signed the contract and entered escrow, it seemed that this time around, it wasn’t going to happen.

Bea and I were on a time crunch. We wanted to get into this new home to start painting and prepping the house for our stuff to arrive, as well as our second baby. The first thing that went wrong was that we never got our earnest money back from the first house we went under contract for. The second was trying to secure the financing for the home. I’m not sure if it was the company that our realtor was having us use or the fact that I didn’t have a job yet. There seemed to be a lot of bumps in the road getting all the documents signed and completed. The day we signed the final financial documents, the interest rates went way up. We went from having a little over 1% interest rate to just over 5%.

The next thing that went wrong was the VA appraisal inspection. We had a third-party inspection done, but it didn’t really find anything we didn’t already know about. The VA appraisal found rotten siding and window sills. And if they were not repaired by a professional, the VA would not back the loan for the home. And all of this happened about one week before we were supposed to close on the house. The biggest issue with this was not the repair. But one of the conditions of the purchase was that the seller would not pay/make any repairs to the home before selling. And we weren’t going to have the home repaired just in case it fell through somehow.

The Housing Gods were shining down on us that day, and the seller agreed to make the repairs so we could buy the home. Of course, this meant pushing the closing date back about a week, but we were getting that much closer to having our own space again. While we were waiting for these repairs to be made, we decided to look at the different houses online, just in case we somehow ended up losing this house too.

After about a week or so of waiting, the repairs were finally made. And it was now time to schedule the VA back out and assess the repairs. And at this point in time, we were days away from the new closing date, which was now the beginning of April. Through some miracle, the VA appraisers were able to come out at the last minute and approve the repair. Which meant we could finally close on this home.
We had a closing date of March 25th, and as that date was quickly approaching, it was looking more and more like we weren’t going to make that date. We weren’t really sure why that date wasn’t going to work anymore, but that’s what we were being told by our realtor. After getting another cryptic text from our realtor, my wife was sick of the delays and messaged him back. She said, that all of these delays were bullshit and that we were going to close on the day that we agreed upon.

By yet another miracle we managed to close on the agreed-upon day. And we finally had a home to call our own again!