1.35 The best of times ... the worst of times ...

By Cyndi
August 13, 2012

This past week was supposed to have been one of the best weeks of our year.  

The Highs:

• My brother and sister in law giving birth to my nephew, Asher Cato Gimpel
• Matt turns 22 (shhhh ... plus ten)
• Close on a house and start moving

Well, two of things went off without a hitch.  But the last one, couldn't have gone in a worse direction; one that we never expected.

Let me set the stage and do my best to make this as brief as possible.

Two and a half hours before we were scheduled to close on Tuesday (a close date that was picked when we put our offer in the first week of July), I received a call from our lender, Bank of America, that they required more information.  WHAT?  I was minutes from walking out the door at work and Matt was sitting outside our local BoA, about to get a cashier's check for closing as they called me.  Are you kidding me?

I quickly ran to my desk, prepared the information and faxed it within 20 minutes.  (Note: They wanted explanations for  $65, $72 & $499 deposits into our checking account -  a BoA account.  The $499? She said she could not tell whether or not it was a cash deposit. You work for them same bank, there is no way for you to check that yourself?!).  When I called the lady back to say the fax is going through, she said to me, and I quote, "I need to reset your expectations for closing.  You will close within the next two weeks".  I LOST it at that point.  I told her that someone else would call her shortly.

The remainder of the week, Matt and I have spent 2-4 hours daily on the phone with BoA trying to figure out what needs to get done so we can close.  Well, talking to whomever will actually pick up their phone/answer email. Except for the local loan officer, it seems that almost no one else has the huevos to actually talk to us, the customer. Our seller was getting ancy towards the end of the week, understandably, and requested to our realtor that he be reimbursed for losing $100/day from this delay.  On Friday afternoon, BoA agreed to credit $1000 back to use in closing costs, so that Matt and I can pass it along to the seller and hold him out until Wednesday of this week.

This stress along with rearranging everything else we had planned (we had already put in our notice at daycare, scheduled appliance delivery, and a contractor ready to start) and all of the other things going on in our lives, left this week to be almost unmanageable.

I guess we were too prepared, but this mess up by BoA is outrageous.  I was told by two people at BoA that they would have NEVER finished it all by our closing date.  Ummm ... then why wasn't that said in the three weeks you had our contract?

I can hope this week goes better.  The thought of losing our earnest money because the bank didn't communicate makes me sick.

Here are two videos from this week for a little sunshine in our otherwise awful week.