House #3: Maybe Next Week

If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the real estate business, it’s that nobody really does their job — at least not well. Coming from the tech world, I’m used to things moving quickly, and if you can’t keep up, you’re left behind (or fired)…

Not so in the real estate world. While I fully expected contractors to be unreliable (and they haven’t let me down in this regard), I didn’t expect the same from agents, lenders, attorneys, etc. But, sure enough, many of them are plenty lazy themselves. You’d think in this economy customer service and efficient communication would be a staple in this business, but it’s not.

Here’s the latest…

The Second Chance House is selling for about three times my purchase price six months ago, and as such, should need at least two appraisals to get the buyer approved for an FHA loan. We had one appraisal last week, and everything came back fine. We spoke with the lender after the appraisal came back, and he assured us that we should be able to close early this week (today, tomorrow, perhaps Wednesday).

Well, this afternoon (Monday), we get a call from the lender saying that we won’t be able to close until at least next week. Here are the details:

• First, we need a second appraisal. I suspected this, but given the discussion with the lender last week, I assumed it wasn’t necessary. According to the lender today, he wanted to wait until the inspection report came back to do the second appraisal, just in case there were issues and the sellers wanted to back out (and not pay for the second appraisal). My guess is that the lender didn’t realize until today that he was supposed to get a second appraisal, and made up that story so as not to have to admit the mistake;
• The lender can’t order the second appraisal under he sees the inspection report. The buyer’s agents were supposed to send that to him this morning, but apparently haven’t yet done so;
• Lastly, the lender informed us that the buyer’s funds were actually coming from the county government. Apparently, the buyers are losing their current property to Eminent Domain, and the county is paying for the new residence. What the lender hadn’t informed us of earlier is that the county takes about 5-7 days to issue the funds for closing *after* they receive the final appraisal.

So, best case, the lender will get the inspection report tonight, the appraiser will visit the property tomorrow, he’ll issue the appraisal by Wednesday, and we’ll be ready to close by next Wednesday. Worst case, I’ll be writing follow-ups to this post for weeks to come…