When last we left our intrepid heroine and her stalwart knight in slightly tarnished armor ... Oh, wait! This is real life. I get so confused sometimes. This living almost all day in the virtual world, sometimes messes with my head and it takes me awhile to figure out what's real. Let's start again.
So Bud and I became homeowners, but I'd be willing to bet our first year was unlike any other first year for any other person buying a home. For one thing, we lived in our new home for 11 months without paying a cent. The man who built our home -- well built is a bit of a misnomer in this case, as our house is a prefab. The man who owned the property on which our home was placed, actually owned a much larger piece of property and our home was built on the one acre in the uppermost right hand corner of his large property. He erected our home in the middle of the early 1980's recession, and then was surprised to discover no one showed any interest in buying. After construction was completed -- again not totally accurate so let's just say construction was almost completed -- the house sat empty for a year. As the land is located in an area still pretty much countrified, you can image that it was downright desolate out here 30 years ago. Thus, the house was an easy target for thieves who made off with the outside unit for the air conditioning system and the burners on the electric stove. No, they didn't take the stove; just the burners. I thought that was odd, but as I've never been much of a thief, it's hard for me to imagine what might have been going through their heads. In any event, we moved into the house, with the owner's permission, before all the t's were dotted and the i's crossed, because everyone felt that would prevent any more theft or vandalism.
Our landowner had a mortgage on his property. I don't recall exactly how large his property was, but it was something like 30 or 40 acres. When he decided to erect our house, he took out a second mortgage on the property to get the money for the construction. It was his intention to sell us the one acre piece of land with the house and use the profit he made from the sale to divvy up the rest of the property and erect more homes to sell. Unfortunately, like I said, the country was in a recession. The terms agreed upon when we signed the contract to purchase the house were owner financing at 12% until such time as we were able to obtain a mortgage through a bank or other lender at 12%, at which time we would refinance through the other lender. His mortgages on his property were also at fairly low rates, but as the country was now deep in a recession, mortgage interest rates had skyrocketed into the neighborhood of 18%-20%. His bankers were nobody's fools. They refused to allow him to break out just this one little acre from his package. If he wanted to sell us this house, he would have to completely pay off both of his low interest mortgages and then refinance the remaining property at a much higher interest rate. Sure that's a lot like robbery, but banks get away with it every day of the year. So, our seller gave us written permission to live in the house rent free for a month until he could get his affairs straightened out and be able to give us clear title to this one little acre of land. One month became two, then three, then four. Each month he granted us the right to live rent free, in the desperate hope he would eventually find a way out of the morass at the bank. After about six months, he started getting a little testy. He wanted us to get a mortgage through another lender and buy the home and land outright. Well, mortgage rates had started to drop, but they were still nowhere near 12%, so I pointed out to him that our agreement was to refinance, which we could not possibly do as we had yet to finance. Each month he got testier and angrier and began to imply little threats through the realtor. We, of course, ignored him because he didn't have a leg to stand on, and we had all the appropriate paperwork to prove it.
I might have been a little more considerate of the man's position if it weren't for all the mess we discovered once we'd moved into our brand new, never been lived in home. Of course, the air conditioning unit needed to be replaced, at his cost. We moved in on April 15, 1982. He waited until mid-August to replace the air conditioning unit. You do not want to know how hot and humid it gets in central North Carolina by mid-August. Then he tried to replace it with an outside unit made by a different manufacturer because it cost less. Fortunately the HVAC installer told him there was no way in hell to match up two different manufacturer's units, and he had to get the correct one. But he still got the cheapest unit he could find and it only last five years. He replaced the burners on the stove almost immediately, because that would have been an impossible situation to try to function without a working stove. He had not, however, had the electrical inspection completed or the plumbing inspection completed on the house, so technically we were living in a home that was not approved for human habitation. The first full day we lived in the house we discovered that only the bottom socket was functional on every electrical outlet in the house. Not a single one of the upper sockets had electricity. When we called the electrician out to find out what was going on, he discovered that one of the other contractors had found an electrical wire in his way while he was working and so he simply cut it into and left it dangling. Once that was repaired (thankfully before we had any fires), we were able to get the electrical inspector out to the house and it passed inspection. Unfortunately, the plumbing did not pass inspection, so we had to call the plumber to come out and fix whatever was wrong with that mess and then have the inspector come back to approve the plumbing. No, we didn't have to pay for any of this, but we also should not have had to deal with any of this. We both worked. Someone had to stay home to meet with these guys for all the repairs and inspections. It was not a good time for us. Eventually, we got all the inspections done and approved and our home was certified safe to live in -- we'd only been living in it three months already. There were other little nitpicky things that kept me irritated with our seller, so I was definitely not inclined to grant any mercy to him in his struggles with the bank.
Finally, after nine months, the mortgage rate for VA loans dropped to 12%. As I was a vet, getting a VA loan should have been a piece of cake. The only reason I decided to refinance before I had ever financed was to get the seller out of my life. I was so tired of the man, I was afraid what I might do if I had to continue dealing with him on a regular basis. I just wanted him to go away -- far, far away. I wanted the house to be ours, to do with as we pleased, without worrying that somehow we might find yet another way to annoy the crap out of the seller. I applied for a VA loan. Well, that wasn't such a slam-dunk after all. Seems I didn't make enough money to buy the house based on my salary alone, and they couldn't consider Bud's salary unless he was a vet or we were legally married.
As we were sitting in the office of the financial advisor, I turned and looked my beloved directly in his beautiful clear blue eyes and said, "How do you feel about two years in the Army?" He didn't bother to answer, so I turned to the financial guy and said, "Looks like we'll be getting married."
So Bud and I became homeowners, but I'd be willing to bet our first year was unlike any other first year for any other person buying a home. For one thing, we lived in our new home for 11 months without paying a cent. The man who built our home -- well built is a bit of a misnomer in this case, as our house is a prefab. The man who owned the property on which our home was placed, actually owned a much larger piece of property and our home was built on the one acre in the uppermost right hand corner of his large property. He erected our home in the middle of the early 1980's recession, and then was surprised to discover no one showed any interest in buying. After construction was completed -- again not totally accurate so let's just say construction was almost completed -- the house sat empty for a year. As the land is located in an area still pretty much countrified, you can image that it was downright desolate out here 30 years ago. Thus, the house was an easy target for thieves who made off with the outside unit for the air conditioning system and the burners on the electric stove. No, they didn't take the stove; just the burners. I thought that was odd, but as I've never been much of a thief, it's hard for me to imagine what might have been going through their heads. In any event, we moved into the house, with the owner's permission, before all the t's were dotted and the i's crossed, because everyone felt that would prevent any more theft or vandalism.
Our landowner had a mortgage on his property. I don't recall exactly how large his property was, but it was something like 30 or 40 acres. When he decided to erect our house, he took out a second mortgage on the property to get the money for the construction. It was his intention to sell us the one acre piece of land with the house and use the profit he made from the sale to divvy up the rest of the property and erect more homes to sell. Unfortunately, like I said, the country was in a recession. The terms agreed upon when we signed the contract to purchase the house were owner financing at 12% until such time as we were able to obtain a mortgage through a bank or other lender at 12%, at which time we would refinance through the other lender. His mortgages on his property were also at fairly low rates, but as the country was now deep in a recession, mortgage interest rates had skyrocketed into the neighborhood of 18%-20%. His bankers were nobody's fools. They refused to allow him to break out just this one little acre from his package. If he wanted to sell us this house, he would have to completely pay off both of his low interest mortgages and then refinance the remaining property at a much higher interest rate. Sure that's a lot like robbery, but banks get away with it every day of the year. So, our seller gave us written permission to live in the house rent free for a month until he could get his affairs straightened out and be able to give us clear title to this one little acre of land. One month became two, then three, then four. Each month he granted us the right to live rent free, in the desperate hope he would eventually find a way out of the morass at the bank. After about six months, he started getting a little testy. He wanted us to get a mortgage through another lender and buy the home and land outright. Well, mortgage rates had started to drop, but they were still nowhere near 12%, so I pointed out to him that our agreement was to refinance, which we could not possibly do as we had yet to finance. Each month he got testier and angrier and began to imply little threats through the realtor. We, of course, ignored him because he didn't have a leg to stand on, and we had all the appropriate paperwork to prove it.
I might have been a little more considerate of the man's position if it weren't for all the mess we discovered once we'd moved into our brand new, never been lived in home. Of course, the air conditioning unit needed to be replaced, at his cost. We moved in on April 15, 1982. He waited until mid-August to replace the air conditioning unit. You do not want to know how hot and humid it gets in central North Carolina by mid-August. Then he tried to replace it with an outside unit made by a different manufacturer because it cost less. Fortunately the HVAC installer told him there was no way in hell to match up two different manufacturer's units, and he had to get the correct one. But he still got the cheapest unit he could find and it only last five years. He replaced the burners on the stove almost immediately, because that would have been an impossible situation to try to function without a working stove. He had not, however, had the electrical inspection completed or the plumbing inspection completed on the house, so technically we were living in a home that was not approved for human habitation. The first full day we lived in the house we discovered that only the bottom socket was functional on every electrical outlet in the house. Not a single one of the upper sockets had electricity. When we called the electrician out to find out what was going on, he discovered that one of the other contractors had found an electrical wire in his way while he was working and so he simply cut it into and left it dangling. Once that was repaired (thankfully before we had any fires), we were able to get the electrical inspector out to the house and it passed inspection. Unfortunately, the plumbing did not pass inspection, so we had to call the plumber to come out and fix whatever was wrong with that mess and then have the inspector come back to approve the plumbing. No, we didn't have to pay for any of this, but we also should not have had to deal with any of this. We both worked. Someone had to stay home to meet with these guys for all the repairs and inspections. It was not a good time for us. Eventually, we got all the inspections done and approved and our home was certified safe to live in -- we'd only been living in it three months already. There were other little nitpicky things that kept me irritated with our seller, so I was definitely not inclined to grant any mercy to him in his struggles with the bank.
Finally, after nine months, the mortgage rate for VA loans dropped to 12%. As I was a vet, getting a VA loan should have been a piece of cake. The only reason I decided to refinance before I had ever financed was to get the seller out of my life. I was so tired of the man, I was afraid what I might do if I had to continue dealing with him on a regular basis. I just wanted him to go away -- far, far away. I wanted the house to be ours, to do with as we pleased, without worrying that somehow we might find yet another way to annoy the crap out of the seller. I applied for a VA loan. Well, that wasn't such a slam-dunk after all. Seems I didn't make enough money to buy the house based on my salary alone, and they couldn't consider Bud's salary unless he was a vet or we were legally married.
As we were sitting in the office of the financial advisor, I turned and looked my beloved directly in his beautiful clear blue eyes and said, "How do you feel about two years in the Army?" He didn't bother to answer, so I turned to the financial guy and said, "Looks like we'll be getting married."
No comments:
Post a Comment