Friday, August 26, 2011

Gah! Back to Square One

So our lender called yesterday and our condo is a no go. 
(If you are a new reader, I'll give you the Reader's Digest version on our condo story: currently we are homeless.  We sold our house and nearly everything in it at the beginning of the year and have been traveling and staying with friends and family along the way.  When we ended up in Las Vegas a couple of months ago, a cousin said 'you HAVE to buy here now because prices are SO low'.  And they are.  We decided to make Las Vegas our home base and within a couple of days of arriving we found the perfect condo and promptly made an offer.  Since it is a bank-owned property, we weren't too distressed that the process to buy the condo was stretching out for months; as we are currently in Seattle and will be heading to Asia next week, it isn't like we need to move in any time soon.)
So fast forward to yesterday.  After signing a massive amount of documents over the past couple of months, getting the financing in line, and having the inspection done, the very nice lender lady called and told us that the selling agent was an idiot (not in so many words but I know that's what she meant).  The selling agent had put down that the condo was FHA and VA approved (meaning the buyer--us--can get one of these standard loans for the condo--some condos are not FHA or VA approved because they have a too high vacancy rate or too many of the units are renter instead of owner occupied).  Everyone--our realtor, our lender, and us--went on the selling agent's assumption and proceeded to move forward with the sale.
Turns out this development is not FHA/VA approved so the lender said that if we want the condo, we will need to make a cash offer (being the nice lender that she is, she also warned us that if we do buy with cash, we would have a difficult time in the future selling the unit because, again, the new buyer would not be able to get a loan for it).
I don't happen to have $64,000 in cash laying around and while I am super tempted to borrow the cash from a couple of people that I am sure would loan it to us, no questions asked, it goes against my number one rule of never borrowing or loaning money to family or friends as this is the surest way to end up with people hating you (ie: if you get sick or lose your job and can't pay the loan, the banks have a built in cushion whereas friends or family who do such a thing don't so you have not only sunk your own self financially but someone else as well. Not a good idea).
So the personal loan idea is out the window and we are back at square one.  Since hubby really, really wants to live in Las Vegas, our new plan is to come back from Asia, get a rental truck, drive our meager belongings down there and put them in a storage unit (currently they are in a storage unit in the Seattle area), find another place to make an offer on, then head to the east coast for a couple of months until the home closes then fly back to Vegas and move in. Whew. If only it is that easy!

7 comments:

  1. Sorry about your home troubles! That really stinks and what a waste of time. Will you get anything refunded?

    ReplyDelete
  2. LOL! I wish it were that easy for you. I'm sorry to hear about your bad news. Maybe something better is around the corner!

    ReplyDelete
  3. WOW!!! What an ordeal! Hope the next one works out better. Enjoy Asia, our dream is to travel there someday


    Judy

    ReplyDelete
  4. I was so afraid this was going to happen. Maybe it was meant to be and something better is waiting for you. That's usually how I look at things.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Thanks for the nice comments! I kind of think like you all do that if it isn't meant to be that's OK because something better will be coming. We will get all of our money back, both the escrow money AND our realtor will refund the $200 we paid for the home inspection because he didn't make sure that the home could be financed (it should have been telling that when I called a handful of inspectors and asked if they take their fee out of escrow they all said no because too often sales fall through and they don't get paid. Yikes).

    ReplyDelete
  6. Aww... That's. Bummer! :( I'm sorry that all fell through! Geez.. Can you imagine having access to $64K in cash.. *sigh* lol!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. I know it sounds crazy, but if you are talking about $64k only, why don't you just save it up and forgo the mortgage. It probably won't take that long and you'll save yourself the expense and hassle of getting a bank to finance the house. Go for the 100% downpayment! You'll be able to negotiate a better price, too.

    ReplyDelete