We are homeowners

This was quite a roller coaster of a day. We woke up excited to close on our house late this morning. Mike headed off to work for a few hours, while I was going to get some extra sleep and head to the bank to get a check for our closing costs.

As of last night, our attorney still had not received our final closing costs from the title company, so first thing this morning, I called to follow up. We were closing at 11, and as of 9 a.m. we still didn't have anything.

At 10:05 I received a call and was quoted closing costs more than 5 times what we were expecting. This poses a really cash problem when you are supposed to sign on the dotted line in less than an hour. After the seconds of stunned silence, I asked "WHAT?! WHY?"

Apparently, the title company had decided (this morning) we needed to pay indemnity insurance (two or three times your property taxes - for those of you who don't know, like I didn't until today) even though we already set up an escrow account for our property taxes. All seemed fishy, and I called the lender, who called the title company and told them they couldn't do that and to take it off. At this point I went from crying because we didn't have enough cash to close today, to feeling nervous.

About this time, Mike rolled into the driveway and we headed out to the Title Company office for closing. After circling in around for a while (Google Maps failed us today), we finally found the office, headed up and checked in. "You're not closing here today. You must have the wrong office." We promptly held up our meeting notice provided by the attorney, only to find out we had been scheduled at their other office. Oh, of course, how silly of us to have come to the wrong one.

We arrived, only to find out lender pointing out more and more mistakes to the HUD-1 (form with what we have to pay), then the attorney showed up and pointed out more and more mistakes. All told, they printed four copies of this document before they got it right. The seller's attorney was quite a site as well. This fly-by-night man of law (I assume that's what he would want to be called) was wearing a fancy black t-shirt and had a number of hand written documents for our attorney (who got a kick out of the whole thing - until he started to get annoyed) to review.

Two hours later... we were down to less than a third of the closing costs we expected to pay. We left with more money that we ever expected (Can you say New Sofa? Seriously, someone ask my husband.) and brand new keys.

But wait, there's more! We started work on the house this afternoon. We collected trash and pulled up carpet in two of the bedroom. We snapped a few pictures... please enjoy!