How The Bank Almost Ruined Our Plans

If you have been paying attention, you will know that we have spent a considerable amount of time over the past few months looking for, and trying to buy, a house. Minx and Hermit have been dealing with the mortgage stuff - mainly Minx, as she's the one who's name is on the loan. She has had to fill out approximately 300 million forms* and has done so quickly, efficiently and with minimum amount of fuss for the bank. One might, therefore, reasonably expect the bank to put in a similar amount of effort. If her co-operation wasn't enough, then maybe the fact that it is a business transaction that they would make a considerable amount of money from would be.

Apparently not. They called Minx sometime last week, maybe 3 days before we were due to finally close on the house, and told her that she needed to have a 45 minute counselling session in order to satisfy the requirements and therefore get the money. She called the relevant people and they didn't have a slot available til sometime the following week. Ok, so maybe we couldn't close on Friday. Well, that's upsetting and throws all our plans off, but we can still buy the house at least. By some miracle, she manages to get a session the following day because someone has dropped out. Apparently, the bank should get the required paperwork in time, so Friday can still happen! Hooray!

Oh. No, wait, it says here that you're in a contract for a rental property until November? Yes, yes we are. And you have been aware of this for MONTHS. Ok, well this means that you now can't buy ANYTHING until October.
...
Yes, this actually happened. Because Minx and Hermit's contract on their current flat doesn't end until November, the underwriter told them they couldn't buy anything, as they'd effectively be paying for 2 houses. Never mind that they've know for months, and that their flat is likely to be re-rented long before then. Hermit makes a call to the apartment complex and they agree to let them out of the contract (for a fee, of course). By this time it's after 5pm on Thursday and we still have no idea if the underwriters will accept this...and won't know until Friday morning. So we spend a very tense night packing all the cleaning stuff just in case we can get into the house and clean it like we'd been planning for several weeks.

Somehow, by some kind of miracle, it all works. The bank accepts everything, Minx and Hermit close on the house, and I drive up that night with the Child and Dog. We all breath one HUGE sigh of relief, and some of our stress starts to disappite.


*Maybe even more. I didn't pay that much attention, but there were A LOT. Like, more forms than God needed to fill out to get planning permission for the continent of America.