Tuesday, July 31, 2007

Catch-22, No Closing For You!!!

So, it all gets more complicated. One of the stipulations to my FHA mortgage from hell is that, because my cosigner (thanks Dad!) is not living in the property, I can't purchase a multi-unit house. I was unaware of this when I made my offer, so now after the appraisal, everyone's freaking out about this duplex that isn't even supposed to be a duplex!

Basically, the house counts as a duplex because it has two kitchens. One will be my bedroom, but try telling that to my bank! So herein lies the catch-22: I can't close until I remove the kitchen, but I can't remove the kitchen until I close! Grrr...

I talked with the listing agent to see how we could fix this situation so I can FINALLY close on the dang house. I said that I would be able to do all the work necessary to seal the deal if the seller would allow it, I'd just need access to the house. Luckily, the seller was OK with this and tomorrow morning I'm doing the necessary changes for my loan to go through. I need to remove the oven (it's a mini apartment stove, about 2.5 ft. wide) and the kitchen sink, essentially rendering the kitchen unusable. All I have to do after that is take some photos to email to the appraisal company. The underwriters come next, then closing. Hopefully Friday. Better be Friday!

I looked up Mr. Somes' obituary at the library while I was on campus today to see what it said. Yeah, I'm a creeper but I'm interested about the history of the house! There was a picture in his obituary, which was really interesting to see. You don't usually get to have an image of someone who lived in your house over fifty years ago. The paper said that he served in WWII, how cool is that? As it turns out Mr. Somes was very involved in many community organizations including the American Legion, Elks club, Eagles club, Boy Scouts, Veterans of Foreign Wars, and some sort of business organization. A man after my own heart; I'm in a handfull of student organizations, we must both be prone to joining organizations! He was the branch manager of some sort of business I haven't researched yet. Most impressive though, was that he and his wife managed to raise 6 kids in my 1350 sq. foot 4 bedroom house. Mind you, the second bathroom wasn't added until 1984! I have a lot of respect for Mr. Somes & I'm excited to fix up his house!

3 comments:

Jean Martha said...

I'm so sorry, what a big pain in the butt!! Thinking good thoughts for you!

Jerome said...

Hopefully everything goes through for you. Good on ya for your persistence. Cheers.

Kelli said...

You can do it, Nate! Hang in there, buddy! It'll all be worth it in the end.

And cool info about Mr. Somes! Sometimes when it's really quiet in the house I can imagine people dressed in clothing from the 1920s walking around in my house. Not like spooky ghosts, but more like a historical re-inactment. But I'm kinda just crazy like that. :-P