As promised, here is the story of the 3910 house.
Way back in the middle of May, our landlord sent me a text stating that she had been waiting on her tax return to come in so she could catch up on our mortgage. However, she had back money owed to student loans, and they took all of her return. Which meant the house was being foreclosed on. WHAT?! ?! Yeah. I was livid. How in the world was our house being foreclosed on, when I made sure that the rent check was in her possession every single month. Where was that money going???
So, we asked if we could just take over the mortgage. Simple, right? Not so much. After she talked to her loan holders..we first would have to get pre-approved and find financing. Also, because she had two loans for the house, both loan holders would have to sign off on a quick sale. Which, luckily they were willing to do. Unfortunately, because of lack of credit, Josh would not be able to qualify to be on the loan. I was going to have to be on the loan all by myself, and because I am a server, my pay stubs and tax returns only show so much income coming into my house. Plus, I had a good amount of debt to clear up from previous credit card accounts. We were turned down.
Thus began our search for a home. The first loan broker told us we could only afford about a $40k house. This left us with very limited options...and very unfortunate looking houses. I reached out to another mortgage company, a local one in fact instead of a corporate bank. We were pre-qualified and told we could probably get financed for more around $70k. Maybe more if needed. We kept looking. And we found a house in the same neighborhood that we liked. Granted it needed some love, and updating; but because of the loan we would be going through, HUD would pay for the updates. It was a great deal. only $54. Two bedroom, one bath, nice size kitchen, living room, and a den for Josh to have a man cave. We placed our bid. We were out bid. Our search continued.
I researched and scoured the Crye-Leike website. I compiled a list of houses to look at and contacted our agent. That's when we found 805 and it was love at first site. But, it was a little higher than what we were told we could afford. I called the loan officer and she played with numbers and said that she saw no reason why we couldn't afford it. So we put in our offer. 805 was listed at $89,900 and we offered $82k. Our offer was accepted the next day.
I worked with the mortgage company and we got everything ready for the underwriter. Our loan broker was so helpful, and did a great job pulling together our loan. However, because of my debt ratio, the underwriter denied us. But, because the broker was so excellent, she passed all of our information to a friend at another mortgage company. And finally, after paying off some more debt, we were approved and heading to closing.
Now keep in mind, while all this was going on, we had no idea when we were going to have to move out of 3910. We stayed there all summer, without any word from our landlord. We actually hadn't talked to her since we found out that we were unable to purchase that home. I guess it was the end of August that we received a letter from an attorney stating that the house was being auctioned on October 16. We moved out on the 14th of October, moved boxes to my parents house, furniture to storage and stayed up on the mountain until closing on the 22nd.
Now we are almost fully moved into 805. There are still a few more boxes up on the mountain, which will be recovered this weekend. Holy man. I never, ever want to go through that again. It was a hell of a summer, and I hope that none of you ever have to go through that headache. But, it's all over and now we have a home. A home of our very own.
P.S. We
still have not heard from our ex-landlord. Last we heard, she ran off to Oklahoma. Coward.
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