House #6: The Saga Continues

In a recent post, I mentioned the continued underwriting drama surrounding The Red Garage House. I was pretty angry when I wrote that post (specifically about the mortgage broker incorrectly ordering the appraisal), but I’ve quickly transitioned from pissed off to a state of complete apathy over this particular deal. In fact, it’s so ridiculous that I’m almost finding it amusing at this point…

Here’s the latest…

The mortgage broker (who incorrectly ordered the appraisal) didn’t call me back on Monday, and didn’t return my phone calls on Tuesday either. On Wednesday morning, I finally got a hold of him, and he completely absolved himself of any responsibility for the mistake. He claimed that he “followed the lenders rules on their appraisal sheet,” and it was the lender’s fault for changing the rules and not telling him.

Whatever.

He then proceeded to tell me that he needed to order a 3rd appraisal, this time according to the lender’s rules. I said, “Great, let me know when it’s done.” At which point he asked me for a credit card number to charge the appraisal. While I was expecting him to ask, I was still a bit surprised. I paid for the 2nd appraisal ($400), which I probably shouldn’t have paid for, but didn’t feel like arguing (FHA doesn’t allow the buyer to pay for a second appraisal, so the seller and the broker have to fight it out). After having him waste my $400 on the 2nd appraisal — the one that was ordered incorrectly — I certainly wasn’t going to pay another $425 for the 3rd.

He told me that he couldn’t afford to pay for it, and that if I didn’t pay for it, it wouldn’t get done. That was all I needed to hear…

My wife spent the next 15 minutes or so researching the mortgage brokerage company. Turns out it’s a big national company owned by a large regional bank out of Chicago. My wife got the name of an executive at the parent company and gave me a phone number. Within an hour, I was talking to the guy at the parent company who ran the brokerage firm.

I explained to him the situation, and concluded with, “It’s a shame that this buyer has been waiting 3 months for this loan, and now the deal is going to die because the broker screwed up and can’t afford the $425 to fix his own mistake. I assume I can have the buyer and his wife give you a call directly if they have any further concerns?”

Within 5 minutes I was talking to someone in management at the brokerage firm who said he’d look into it and would get back to me. An hour later, I got simultaneous phone calls from the idiot broker (the guy who screwed up) and the guy in management. They were both calling to tell me that the 3rd appraisal had been ordered, and would be paid for by the brokerage (and taken out of the idiot broker’s commission). They also requested that the appraisal be expedited and indicated I’d probably get a call from the appraiser today.

Sure enough, at 7pm this evening, the appraiser called and we schedule a time to meet at the property on Thursday morning. Depending on the holiday schedules of the appraiser, the mortgage company and the FHA underwriter, I figure the appraisal should be in underwriting hand by mid-next week, and we should know by late next week if this thing is going to close or not.

I’m certainly not getting my hopes up, but this is the closest we’ve come to the finish line, so who knows…maybe we’ll actually get this deal closed yet. On the bright side, the buyer, the seller and the lender have all ponied up $400+ for appraisals, so we all have a vested interest in seeing this one close.

And, on the brighter side, we’ve kept the house on the market the past few weeks and have gotten a good bit of traffic. So, even if this deal doesn’t close, I’m hopeful we’ll get another buyer pretty soon…