I just found out that buried somewhere in the mountain of house-buying paperwork is a statement that we’re supposed to have all of the reports in by close of business today. We’ve got the termite, sorry, wood-destroying pest inspection report, the roof inspection, the floodplain analysis report, reports about munitions within a mile of the house, and all the other reports except for the appraisal. The appraiser either went into the house and looked around or simply drove by the house to ensure it’s still standing last Thursday. Where’s their report? Where’s the appraiser? I don’t know where specifically, but they WENT ON VACATION.
Because they left for vacation before faxing off their report, we now stand to be in default on the contract. It’s not our fault, but it is our problem. I still haven’t heard back from the Realtor what happens next. If I don’t get so much as a postcard or a “My appraiser went to Hawaii and all I got was this T-shirt and an ulcer” I’ll be upset.
I think I may need to shave my head before I pull all my hair out.
I also am in the process of buying a house. In my case, the real estate lady set up the appraisal and handled everything having to do with it. My closing is 7/7/05 if you need somewhere to stay.
Is it too late to have someone else do it? In my experience apprisal companies are more often than not willing to do stuff on short notice, maybe for a slight surcharge. Be sure to send the bill to the asshole on vacation.
Usually it’s the lender that handles the appraisal. We just bought an investment property and all I got was a phone call from the bank, “Yeah, it appraised at the asking price, see you at the closing!”
Update: Appraisal is in and for the desired amount, so we’re ready to close. Or are we?
Nope! The original close was to be next week, but since we had everything set up, we were planning to close today. I called the mortgage broker yesterday to find out what the closing costs would be. It kinda helps to know how big the cashier’s check needs to be when you’re supposed to pay the closing with a cashier’s check - try as I might, I just couldn’t convince the bank to give me a blank cashier’s check.
We don’t have a definite cost yet because the paperwork is still “in title” I’m fairly confident they don’t mean Title, TX. Where or whatever “in title” is, it’s holding up the game. I do at least know that their estimate of homeowner’s insurance is wildly too high.
However, despite thinking my insurance will be about $500 more than I was quoted for the policy, the overall cost is 50% higher than the “good faith” estimate my Realtor provided about two weeks ago. $7,000 to close has magically turned into over $11,000. Yeah… I’ll just dig in the couch cushions for that extra change. :mad:
You know what they say about real estate: location, location, location. In other words, always make sure you know the location of your appraiser. If you have to, clamp a tracking device on his ankle.
Also, I think this thread’s resale value will go way up if I move it outta this dump and into a nice upcoming neighborhood in MPSIMS.
$11,000 for closing costs?! That seems rather high to me. Are you paying for the seller’s transfer costs? Depending on when you close, they should have sent you a HUD-1 by now. Call the settlement company and compare the two figures. If you make a big enough stink, your mortgage broker will send you a breakdown of the fees. I let my wife handle a lot of this, but she got the mortgage company to send her a copy of the fees. When the settlement company sent us the first estimate of fees. She immediately started arguing with them as to why they were so high. They claimed that they made a mistake and proceeded to correct it. That “mistake” would have cost us about $2,000.00
$11,000 for closing costs, in the SF Bay area…that is like, what…maybe .00001% of the cost of a studio apartment?
However, anywhere else in the US, that would seem a bit excessive.
Not afraid to admit my three bedroom house, with pool, cost $185,000 five and a half years ago here in Las Vegas. I paid about $1000 for closing costs and taxes. Of course, in the meantime, the value has gone up more than 150%.
Never heard of a blank cashier’s check. A cashier’s check is as good as cash, so a blank one would be awfully risky to carry around. That’s why you can’t get one. Why not just write a personal check at closing? I’ve been at many closings and I just wrote a personal check with no problems.
