Hey guys!
So I had a goal to buy my first home by the end of this year. I spent early morning and late nights stalking Zillow, and, in early October, my diligence paid off and I found what would be my first property!
- 3-story, 3100 sq ft with unfinished basement and 1 car driveway (and a small backyard)
- 3bd, 1 and 1/2 bath unit (gonna rent for $1450)
- 4bd, 1 and 1/2 bath (gonna rent for $1700)
- 2bd, 1 bath (gonna occupy this one, then rent for $1250)
I did the walkthrough with my realtor and everything was pretty much decent. The seller flipped homes, so the units were in great condition. There was a broken window and the stairs down to the basement caved in (during my inspection), but the seller took care of those issues so I was ok. It's a 3 family, and though 2 units were vacant, 1 was occupied by a tenant with 15 DOGS. No, I'm not exaggerating. It's a month-to-month tenant , so he's been served a 60-day NTQ, but that was a headache in and of itself.
I was an FHA applicant, so you're probably thinking the 3-month timeline was due to the FHA process. Haha no. Surprisingly, the FHA process was very streamlined. My loan officer was amazing, plus I keep all of my tax documents in one place, so getting the documents over to the underwriter was the least of my issues. The problem was what is known in NJ as "attorney review". I was told that this was a mandatory process in NJ that typically takes 3 days at the most.
We were in attorney review for 5 WEEKS.
Why did it take so long?! Well it was a mixture of things really. Between the seller's attorney being based in NYC but practicing law in NJ (she wasn't good at it), my attorney being selectively responsive and apparently missing important emails, the seller's attorney observing a million religious holidays and being mostly unavailable, the fact that BOTH attorneys were so busy with court cases that my poor AR was of little priority, AND that ALL of this was going on around the holidays (Nov/Dec)??? It was just a complete disaster. These attorneys had some sort of personal vendetta against each other that no one else knew about, which was cause for many heated emails (and conference calls) and drew out the process THAT much more. And the sweet cherry on top was the fact that my landlord was letting me break my lease under the condition that I move out by Dec 23rd.
We ending up closing on Dec 22nd.
We were initially supposed to close by Nov 30th, but the AR dragged on unnecessarily for SO LONG...for my first property, there were SO many times I just wanted to cancel the deal and give up. It was indeed a rollercoaster and I was deathly afraid of being homeless. The seller did offer to let me live in one of the vacant units until we closed, so then I was deathly afraid of having to pay her rent (I'm cheap "frugal".) I did make some silly mistakes too. When it came time to send out the check for the deposit, I sent it overnight to the seller and she cashed it but the money would not leave my account damn it! For 2 weeks I stressed and stressed, went back and forth with my bank, with the seller's attorney...only to find out I never signed the check. Oops. (I'm a millennial, please don't judge me haha.)
Nine times outta ten I was venting all of my worries and frustrations out to my realtor, who I'm sure caught instant headaches whenever I called him. But he was very resourceful and gave an arm and a leg and then some to get this deal closed. The last week before we closed, the attorneys were still scrambling to get important documents to each other and file certain provisions with the State and City...my anxiety was through the roof all the way up until closing, when the seller's attorney had to hand deliver the original documents to closing (she ended up sending the documents in an Uber because it was late Friday night and the holiday traffic meant that she might not make it back home before Saturday to observe the Sabbath.)
All in all, this was a VERY eventful process. I wish I could tell you the full story in all of it's detailed hilarity, but I'm sure that I'd pass the BP character limit 3 times over. But...I didn't give up! I got the house and I'm sitting down typing this post from inside of it now! Can you believe it? Can you believe I made it? I still don't.
Merry Christmas to me, huh?
