Pre Settlement Demonstration

Yesterday morning we had our pre settlement demonstration.  My dad drove up and met us at the house, it was his first time being to our new neighborhood and the house.  Upon arriving we learned that we had a new set of project managers who were the ones to finish our house.  I wonder how often they move them around.  I hope they don't change them again anytime soon.  Its hard to know who you'll be dealing with if an issue arises.  Anyway, the beginning was going over the warranties and signing some papers.  Then they took us through the house, starting in the kitchen.  They taught us about our appliances, our windows, the doors, the floor, lights,  tile, water heater, sump pump, garage door opener, etc. 

love our cute little house

 Our PM said that he didn't "blue tape" the house and wouldn't.  He kept stressing that the drywall issues could only be addressed one time and around 1 year after we move in would be the time to do it.  He did also say that if there was something that needed to be fixed before settlement he would take care of it.  As we walked the house there wasn't anything that was jumping out at us, not that we were really looking though either because he had already said we wouldn't be blue taping anything.  As we were leaving we noted the drywall tape spot on the wall in the family room (you can see it from across the room- that is how bad it is)- I asked if we needed to wait until the one year to fix that and he said he would take care of it before we close and took his pen and circled it on the wall.  I am kicking myself for not speaking up about a spot on the wall near the sink that was driving me crazy the whole time he was talking about warranties).  Super hoping he sees it himself and has them paint it.  Its just a spot that needs touch up paint.  Other than that we didn't see anything that jumped out to us.  He did say we will notice a lot more in the first 30 days that we're living there than we would walking the house that day and that they would fix it all at the 30 day mark.

view of the family room

view into the morning room

kitchen view

Other updates:

A couple days before our walk thru we received our closing disclosure to sign and send back.  It had our official amount to bring to closing.  The next day our loan processor emailed and asked for our latest paycheck stub and a signed letter from me about being "unemployed" (aka- stay at home mom).  It feels so good to be so close!!

Today we spent every minute from the time we woke up until the time we put the kids to bed packing and working on getting all of our items put into a central location in the living room to make it easier for our friends and family to help us load up the truck.  My back hurts so badly, I am laying flat on my back typing this blog post right now, trying to ease the pain.... Ouch! ouch! ouch!

We worked over 10  hours straight and got a bunch accomplished but the house is a wreck right now and there is still so much more to do.  Our plan is to close on Thursday at noon, which is kind of too late for us to be able to go see the house, since we will have to run back home to get the kids from school.  But the following day our plan is to load up the minivan (while the kiddos are at school) with all the kitchen items and the clothes from everyone's closets (I do not want to take clothes off hangers, so I am just going to move them from one house to another... hopefully it'll work as well in real life as it does in my head).   Friday night we will pick up the moving truck and Saturday morning we will be loading up, driving north and then unloading.  The next few days we will be bouncing back and forth between houses, cleaning the rental up and having the carpets cleaned.

With knowing our official closing amount we were able to go ahead and purchase (with cash) our washer and dryer and have it scheduled to be delivered.  We also signed up to have our internet hooked up and on Monday we will call to set up all our utilities in our name.  We are so excited to be checking these little things off our list and can't wait to be in our very own home again!!!

I will try to update again after closing and moving in.

5 MORE SLEEPS!!

9 days til...

...our pre-settlement walk through!!

We are getting excited but both of us don't feel like its real.  In the meantime we've reserved our moving truck, and been busy fixing things up around our rental.  We put in our notice at the end of April (a little earlier than required) and our landlord has listed this place for rent and we have our first showing tonight.  This was easily the most stressful part when we were trying to sell our house (two years ago), of course this won't be as bad because we aren't the ones trying to "sell" the property to a new tenant but I will still want to have it as clean as possible when someone comes through--which isn't so easy in the midst of packing, selling furniture off, four kids, three in school, science fair projects, pinewood derby cars, recitals, concerts, etc.  May is always our busiest, most stressful, event packed month and this year may just "take the cake".  I am ready for it to be June so I will have passed over all the unpleasant parts of packing and moving in the midst of our normal everyday chaos and finally be able to breathe and start to unpack and settle into our new home and town... (and state!)

I am getting nervous about utility bills, looking into how much the electric is and the water... I am reminded when I get to the sites and download the documents that I have done it all before... before we signed the contract.  So I really just need to not worry about it and figure it out as it comes... and pray that we will be able to afford this crazy idea we had to buy a house and move an hour north to where its supposedly more affordable... though the taxes have me feeling its actually more expensive.  I am second guessing everything.  Luckily for us we {think} we love the country feel of the area we are moving to (of course we've only been up for short visits)... so if all else fails and this was a stupid idea, hopefully we will at least love the area since we'll be stuck with it.

Speaking of taxes.. that was one thing I didn't update about... we decided to lock in our interest rate the day after we found out that we could.  It was the same as it had been the day before (and on all the loan estimate sheets they'd sent in 2016) but it came with a small lender credit.  So we decided to take it.  It was too stressful to think about for another day.  But when our LO sent us the lock agreement she also sent an updated loan estimate sheet and made note that our closing costs had gone up (significantly I might add!!!!!!) because of the due date on our school taxes.  Oh my goodness, it was shocking and disappointing to say the least.  I freaked out.  Our loan officer was very helpful and called me to discuss my questions and concerns and she explained it all... (and other concerns I had had and wrote about earlier with regards to transfer taxes... seriously, taxes are just my sore subject... why are there so many and why are they so high compared to other areas???  yikes!)
Anyway, the reason for the almost $3,000 jump in our closing cost estimate was that our original LO had the due date for the school property taxes as August 2017 but it should have been August 2016... HUGE difference... especially when it was in the area where the taxes are the highest (more than double the regular property taxes).   I really wish NVR would have offered some kind of credit for their mistake, and the misrepresentation of the taxes due with our closing costs.  It would have been a nice gesture.  Anyway, the LO was helpful as far as explaining the mistake and trying to help us figure out ways to have more cash for closing... her idea was bumping our interest rate up and giving us an extra $1100 credit.  We weren't interested in a higher interest rate so that didn't work for us.
Now money is extra tight and I am a little nervous about having the cash to close.  Remember when I was going to ask the LO about buying our washer and dryer.. yeah, not going to happen now until after closing... and maybe we'll be washing our clothes in the bathtub for a while.  lol. Its kind of frustrating to be at this place where our budget is so tight.  Buying a new house is fun, and it makes you excited to decorate and make it a "home" but with these extra last minute additions to our closing costs its impossible to allow ourselves to purchase one single thing for the house.

One last update... we did receive our appraisal report last week.  I printed and studied all 27 pages of it.  Lol.  Its kind of a mystery how they come up with the number they come up with.  Either way, it appraised for just over our loan amount so I suppose we're all set to go.  It was another worry I had running in the back of my head (I am a worrier... its what I do), with regards to it not appraising and having even more money to bring to closing... we would have had to walk away if that were the case.

Anyway... sorry for the long and boring post with too much information. We haven't been back up to the house and won't be back until our walk through on the 20th.  My Aunt and uncle did drive by on their way through town this past weekend and took a photo on the front porch.  The front door is definitely ajar in the photo but they did not go in because they were afraid to... also I'm sure they just wanted us to be able to show them around once its officially ours.  I did notice my house in the background of our future across the street neighbor's photo on the FB group and noticed that the yellow/brown patches of grass around the driveway have not bounced back yet and I was sure they would with all the rain we've been having... wonder if it'll come back or if its just dead?  :(

So 9 days til walk through and 15 days til closing!  I am ready to be on the other side of this!  My nerves can't take it!