The Wayward Celt

Ah, yes. We are now officially in debt and tied down to property, again.

Yesterday at noon we met with our escrow officer as well as lender and real estate agent to sign all the paperwork involved in buying a home. The seller had their appointment scheduled for yesterday afternoon as well, so everything should be finalized at this point and recorded on Tuesday.

Since the seller had requested a few extra days after Escrow closes to move out, we won’t be taking possession of the property until December 15th. Once we do get the keys, however, we will begin the whirlwind of repairs and improvements which need to be done prior to move-in.

We plan to move around the middle of January, so that should give us a solid month to get the floors done to a point where it is livable. I expect the next month will be a very long one… I foresee long hours spent at the new home working to get it to move-in ready, and at the same time, slowly moving the smaller items every time we go over.

As it stands currently, we still need to decide on flooring, then BUY it and have it shipped over to the new place after the 15th. We also need to get in and do some serious measuring and some destructive investigations to determine what exactly needs to be done and how to do it. Unfortunately that means we are stuck in a holding pattern until the 15th when we can get in and really get to work.

A quick house buying update

Here we sit in the middle of escrow, literally. We are scheduled to close on Dec. 11th, which looked to be in jeopardy of slipping to a later date as of last Friday.

Sitting at lunch Friday afternoon with John, Mary, and Colleen, I received a call I couldn’t let go to voicemail. Our realtor, Doug, was calling with information from the appraiser that the permits for the 1994 renovations on the house were not completed with a final walkthrough and sign off.

This, of course, sent me off into a whirlwind of worry as I attempted to figure out what our options were at this point. Without going into all the issues, suffice to say that getting the permits signed off would cause us to slip the close date (which would cause the seller’s contingency buy of a new place to slip) and would result in a tax increase based on the additional assessed square footage.

Because of the holiday, we had to wait until Monday to get word from the City Planner if indeed the permits hadn’t been completed, or if the information was just missing from the records available to the appraiser. Well, as Doug was verifying this information, the appraiser called back and indicated that he wouldn’t sign off on the appraisal until the permits were completed, which basically took any choice out of our hands.

So an inspector was scheduled to go out to the house and do the final walk-through inspection, which resulted in a few minor caulking issues which the seller will have taken care of before close. But all said and done, and the permits are now signed off without having slipped the close date. Basically, everything concluded in a best case scenario, which of course was the LAST thing we expected as we … (ok only ME)… as I worried about all of the worst case scenarios and how to deal with each case.

As we stand currently, escrow is once again progressing as expected and we have no fear of any permitting issues down the line if we find ourselves in need of selling at some point.

Assuming that we are still taking possession on December 15th, then we are still on a good timeline to get the necessary work completed prior to our move-in, hopefully around the 2nd or 3rd week in January.