In For the Long Haul

I am a professional Realtor in Westfield Indiana, and recently sold my personal home in November of 2014 in a tough market on the East side of Indy. We had a wonderful home, that was very appealing to buyers, but just not in the most desirable areas. It sold in less than 6 months, which is pretty good all things considered.

We were over the moon with emotions, Happy, sad, scared, excited, and filled with gut wrenching pain thinking about our move. After all we had raised our babies, and became a family in this home. We had good friends and programs for our kids, we were part of the community, and loved our physical home. But it was time to full fill a few dreams. One, was to be in Hamilton County, within a school district known to be tops in the state. Two, was to be closer to friends and family that all live with in 10 minutes of Westfield. Finally, safety. There was a constant increase in crime in the area we lived in and we were starting to feel unsafe (although I am huge, and own guns).

So we sold our house, started packing our belongings, and found a lender who could help us out. You see we were of a buyer type that is somewhat risky to lenders, less than 640 credit score, and since I was not fully through with 2 years of tax returns for WKRP Indy Real Estate, I couldn’t use this income. Not the most ideal situation. I found a lender that “served the underserved”, which meant they could finance 580-640 credit scores. This lender will remain unnamed in this post because there were some very rocky situations, and we were not pleased at all with the underwriting process! We did get pre approved, for a lot more than I figured we would be approved for. I grabbed my lovely wife, we shipped the kids off to nana and papa’s for the weekend, and we power shopped homes. We looked at close to 25 homes in 2 days, until we found the one! What we had found was our perfect home-less than 5 minutes from our best of friends, some family, great schools, great neighborhood, perfect sized, it was meant to be “OUR” home.

This is where the long haul starts. We were set to close on our old house November 14th, 21st, or 24th, depending on our lender. The lender told us we would fine to close any one of those dates, so we closed on our old house on the 21st of November…thinking we would close on our new home by the 24th, day before Thanksgiving. Well that did not happen, even after our lender had 45 days prior to get this deal done! We, essentially, had rendered ourselves homeless! Scarey? a bit. Frustrating? 100%!
You see, we were super lucky. I have married into a wonderful family, and have a wonderful family myself. They gave us shelter, food, warmth, and love when we needed it most. We spent Thanksgiving at my In-Laws, after all that was our plan anyways. We would surely close shortly after that, right? So a new closing date was set for Monday, December 1. The day after Thanksgiving, the lender calls me and asks for about dozen more things to get our loan done. Do you think we hit that date? Not even close. So I, representing myself in this transaction, get in touch with selling agent, whose seller/investor is living in China. We extend the contract for another week. The lender again calls December 1st, and asks me for twelve new and seemingly meaningless pieces to the lending puzzle- LOE’s (letter of explanation) about deposits, withdrawels, why we were living with my in-laws, why we sold our house, bank statements, work verification, and a 2012 tax return (that was provided literally 5 times). I mean my file had to be about 1500 pages of everything explaining why I woke up, where I had lunch, and why did I eat there. So I again had to extend our closing date another week. This went on for more than four weeks. Daily I would get the phone call “we are going to need another LOE…” It was frustrating to say the least, it broke us, many times into tears of anger, frustration, and the feelings of why us, will this ever happen? How did we ever over come this long haul?

We gave it up to God. If this Dream house of ours was meant to be, then God would will it to be. This is where the long haul became easy. We knew that if this was not going to happen, there was a reason. So I stayed with the course. I didn’t give up on that lender with horrible underwriting that happened to be located across the country. I didn’t give up on the seller wanting to sell his investment threatening to give up on us as buyers. I didn’t give up on my Real Estate negotiation skills. I didn’t give up even though it was told many times to me, by my peers, family, and friends, just give up, it’s never going to happen. You see buying a house isn’t always easy, but it is not always hard, and if it is turning into a long haul, and everyone around you is being negative about the situation, and telling you to give up. Then give it up to God. He knows where you are supposed be, and I am Happy to help him get you there.

Chad