Finally

Finally. It is done.





We are homeowners of a sweet 3 bed/2 bath home in Bartlett, TN with a HUGE laundry room and a lovely fenced backyard perfect for two energetic little boys.





Finally. The papers have been signed and FedExed and it's all good.

I promised an explanation of our stressful home buying experience. I'm going to make it short and sweet, because at this point I am so very happy it is all over.

The overall home buying process from halfway across the country is riddled with little "incidents" that make a person cringe. We had four major setbacks along the way.

1) Our loan application package got lost in the mail.

Yep. Enough said on that, but I'll clarify just a bit. We sent the package two day priority with confirmation of delivery and one week later the package arrived in pieces on our loan processor's desk WITHOUT the $400+ check for fees. We spent WAY too much money faxing most of those papers while the original documents were floating around and then had to pay for a stop payment fee on the lost check.

2) The VA (Veteran's Admin) gave us trouble.

We were aquiring a VA loan and we had about two weeks of uncertainty regarding whether the VA would approve our loan because they had no "proof" that we'd paid off a prior loan with them in 2001. We had, most definitely, paid off that loan but it had not been properly reported and a lot of red tape was involved in getting that straightened out.

3) The home appraisal was almost $12,000 less than what we'd agreed to pay for the home.

This doesn't sound like a bad thing, but it basically meant that no mortgage lender would approve the original price since the appraisal was so much less. We spent a LONG weekend waiting to hear if the homeowners were going to come down to the appraisal price or just take their house off the market. They finally agreed to the appraisal price and we are blessed to be getting our home for less than expected! We had to renegotiate with them and ended up paying our closing fees, which wasn't so awesome. But we're still paying significantly less for our house.

4) Due to the home appraisal, the VA dragging their feet on the loan, and the Memorial Day bank and mail holiday, we didn't close on our scheduled date. We overnighted our documents on Tuesday and the house closed yesterday afternoon.

It is ours. Praise God!