Closing escrow in a week and still waiting. (Rant alert)

10 years ago

Talking about the duplex in escrow. The seller keeps going on vacations to remote areas where she is out of network. It's driving me crazy as we are waiting on her response to a few issues.

First, the appraisal came in $2,200. under the selling price. Not too surprising since real estate is just now starting to pick up. There are very few comps because like duplexes in our historical, gold rush town are few and far between. Currently there is another duplex (smaller, not as desirable of a neighborhood but newer) in escrow but has not yet closed so can't be used as a comp. It sold for $10K more than ours. I wish the buyers luck with finding comps. Wondering if our appraisal will bring theirs down.

We have asked the seller to reduce the price to reflect the appraisal but no word from her. She needs to strap the hot water heaters with one more strap. She is likely going to refuse to repair the oven in one of the kitchen stoves. That is fine. I have a preference for who works on it.

But here we are a week from closing and we are having a hard time keeping the seller in town long enough to complete the transaction. Hopefully today we will hear something. We were supposed to hear Friday.

We need escrow to close on time because we are going to the cabin on the lake three days after escrow closes. It will be a pain if it closes late.

Meanwhile, we decided to see if we can refinance our own home since we have done jack flips to get a mortgage for the duplex so may as well use the paperwork to lower our interest. We will find out about our house today.

Can't wait until its all over. I find all of this kind if thing stressful.

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Comments (3)

mary_lu_gw
10 years ago
I wish you luck. We just refinanced our home for a much lower interest rate. 2.55 % can you believe it?

We were lucky in one respect. We have a lot of equity in our home. We were really taken by surprise by our appraisal, and not pleasantly! The appraisal came in $10K under what we paid, and that is after we built a 2-story $30K garage 4 yrs ago, new $10K roof, added central air, new concrete driveway, reinsulated attic, and refinished all wood floors! Reason given was there were just no comps anything like our house available. We couldn't believe the houses they did use.
neetsiepie
10 years ago
Ugh-what a pain! When we bought our house, escrow went very easily, but a few weeks later we were closing escrow on the sale of our business. THAT was enough to cause my hair to fall out.

We had a full price cash sale, but it was contingent on a 6 month escrow. The seller gave us a very large non-refundable earnest money deposit, and he was taking over at the end of the busy season, so we didn't object to the terms (especially the full asking price!) But as the time got closer and closer we began sweating bullets-we REALLY needed that sale to close so we could get some liquidity again-we'd used all our cash to close on our home purchase.

The buyer was actually not the problem, it was our realtor-OMG-he was horrible!! HE kept putting off the signing of papers, missed meetings, etc. When we finally got the check in our hands I cried-I never thought we'd make it through that escrow. Sending you good wishes!
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golddust
Original Author
10 years ago
Our house appraisal is running late. Maybe tomorrow... We have/had equity in our house too but California was hit hard by the housing crunch. I have no idea what is going on right now, other than housing has just started going up faster in value than we could possibly make from money in the bank. Finally an upturn. We locked in at 4%, a decent interest rate for investment property.

The good news is the seller came home and has agreed to split the difference with us on the duplex's low appraisal. That means around $700. more down for us (25% down). Much better than us eating the whole difference.

The hot water heaters have yet to be double strapped and she is to have a service man out to check and repair one oven. She agreed to do both.

We signed more papers and it's moving forward once again. Meanwhile, no one is watering anything at the duplex and it's turning brown fast. I left water running on the bush shown in the photo this afternoon and Rob will run past and turn it off on his way home. The red leaves are now crispy. The bush goes up the sidewalk toward the rear unit and is much larger than the photo shows.

Our realtor has worked her butt off for us. She is hungry! Most of the realtors and mortgage brokers around here have spent the past few years living off of their credit. Just a few years ago (2005), that duplex appraised at $500,000. Ouch!

Still, there have been lost papers and documents on the mortgage lenders end. Glad we have the originals.