Day 54: I couldn't even make this shit up if I tried

I am so ready to run screaming for the hills. Seriously people, this is an effing soap opera script, except, it's my life.

Where did I leave off? Oh yes. So the sellers, who were under contract, were threatening to terminate the contract if we didn't close by Thursday the 18th (hello, that's today). Well, it turned out that he was just trying to ruffle our feathers and wanted to make sure everything was going to go through on time. We got it worked out and did indeed light fires under everyone on our team to make the closing on the 18th. We got through last weekend packing and planning on this. Things were looking okay. We decided to do the final walk-through on Tuesday the 16th and had that all set with everyone.

So, Monday the 15th rolls around and we get a call from our realtor saying that we can't do the walk-through on the 16th because the sellers haven't finished the work. Hmmm. We re-schedule it for Wednesday the 17th. No biggie.

Here's where it gets interesting (as if it wasn't already). We had been planning all along to close on the 18th. We had scheduled Matt to get off of work and had double-checked that I didn't need to be at the closing that day. The 18th, which is today, is Iris's 5th birthday and also her last day at school, which I was going to be helping out at. I told our agent I could not be at the closing that day and he double-checked for me and said I didn't need to be. So Wednesday morning rolls around. I wake up to an email from our mortgage broker saying that we need to meet that day to sign the papers, blah blah blah. Just as I was processing this, the phone starts ringing and soon I come to find out that that very day both Matt and I needed to be at the escrow office to sign these papers. Um, well, it was a little tricky because we were NEVER told that we needed to do a damn thing on Wednesday. Matt had brought our only car to work so that he could bring it to the shop to have the brakes looked at. I was planning on bringing Iris to school on the bus. So somehow we needed to get cashiers checks for our downpayment and get to escrow under these circumstances. My dear friend jumped in and helped out on my end and Matt got the car back on his end and came home and got the girls and I just to drive back over to the east side to sign papers. Apparently I did need to be there after all. Oh joy!

We get the papers signed, get the cashier's checks to escrow, shake hands all around and pat everyone on the back for kicking ass and getting this deal closed on time. All that needed to be done now was the escrow company was overnighting the papers to our lender in CA and when they got there they would give us the recording numbers and we would officially be homeowners.

Later on Wednesday night we get to the walk-through. By this point in the day Matt and I are so bone tired we're just running on fumes. But we get to the walk-through and meet our agent, the seller's agent and our inspector there. Did I already mention that the seller's agent had called ours and told him that all of the work still hadn't been done even though we moved the walk-through back a day? So the seller's agent gets his seller on the phone, and Matt talked to him on speaker phone, got his word that the work would be done (with many witnesses there to hear it) and we sigh, get on our way for the night, knowing that we would wake up on Thursday mere hours away from this process being over. Oh my, how wrong we were.

This morning, Thursday the 18th, it's our daughter's 5th birthday. We wake up happy, excited about the big day! It was the girls' last day of school, as well. I had volunteered to be there to help and was thoroughly enjoying myself-- until my cell rings and it's our realtor. I answer it and he asks me if I'm sitting down. The escrow company had sent our documents to the wrong lender's office . There was nothing that could be done to make the deal close today. It would have to close on Monday (because Friday is some bizarre state holiday). I couldn't really talk, I let Matt know to call our realtor and I tried to get back to the task of school fun.

Later, I talk to our realtor and get some information about the escrow company saying they will pay for any costs we've incurred because of this screw-up. I debate all of this with our realtor for a few minutes before I tell him I will talk to Matt and get back to him. Matt calls him and tells me that they worked it all out, we will still be able to move on Saturday, but that we will be renters until closing, with the escrow company paying our rent. Okay, that's fine. Not the absolute best, but still fine.

Later tonight we all sit down to our daughter's birthday dinner. My cell rings, it's our realtor. He asks me to put him on speaker phone, which I do. We get the news that the seller went to the escrow company to sign the documents and realized that he didn't want to pay our realtor as much commission from the sale as he was entitled to get and so he called him and left a message saying as much. Apparently the seller's agent then called and left our realtor a message saying that if our realtor didn't take a cut in his commission, that the seller wouldn't allow us to move in on Saturday (a little tit for tat, no?). Having this info on his voicemail, our realtor gets his broker and the seller's broker involved. Lots of words ensue, but the bottom line is, the seller won't let us move in early-- and he's being such an asshole, we don't even want to anyways. We don't want to be in the house until it's rightfully ours.

So now what? We were planning on moving on Saturday the 20th, we had a crew of fantastic friends all set to help, and now there is no house to move in to. Well, we decided that what we wanted from the escrow company was to have them pay for movers to move our stuff on Tuesday the 23rd. Now we just have to find someone to do it for us.

This has all been an insane nightmare. Tonight I really wanted to walk away from this deal but Matt talked me off of the ledge. We're dealing with a money-hungry seller who owns these properties as investments. Money is his absolute bottom line, no matter who he is stepping on in his quest to get it. It's still a good house for us, despite this awful insane seller. I am so glad that I have him here to help temper my emotions, because if I was buying this house without him, I would have walked a long time ago.

I am sure this is no where near the end of this drama. It can't be, we've gotten this far in to this level of insanity, let's go a little further!

Matt and I have both been asked if we're excited to move, excited to be homeowners. We both respond the same way-- with a shrug and an "eh". I mean, we are, but won't be jumping up and down until the deal is done. Right now, I'm not sure that will ever happen.