How to Buy a home part 3. Wrapping up the details

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At this stage to buy a home; you have found the house you want, placed your bid, done the bartering, set a closing date and secured the home inspection. Now onto the final steps on how to buy a home! The next part of buying a home is not so much fun. There is a lot of waiting and a lot of paperwork.

How to Buy a home part 3. Wrapping up the details

Last steps on how to buy a home

At this stage, you will be sent a lot of paperwork from your financial agent. Basically it is all the paperwork for proceeding with securing your home loan. I hope you have your hand warmed up because there are a lot of places you have to sign and date.

We lucked out. About half of it we were able to E-sign. The other half we had to print out and manually sign and then scan and email the pages back. Over 30 pages worth, all with details about our loan and all the ins and outs of the mortgage.

Soon you should also receive the seller disclosure document. This is basically where the seller has to disclose any flaws with the house as far as they are aware of. It is good to know if there is water damage, electrical issues or if there had been a roof issue the year prior. That sort of thing. You then sign and acknowledge that you are aware of what they have disclosed.

If your agent is brilliant like ours, you will now be reaching the point of getting the home appraised. Our agent explained why she always does this step after the inspection. Since, as the home buyer, we have to pay for both, its a bit smarter to do the least expensive one first. That way of something is wrong with the house and you have to walk away, at least you haven’t sunk $700 into a house you have to walk away from. She always has the home inspection first. Then the home appraisal which costs a lot more.

Since our home passed the home inspection with flying colors; we moved onto the home appraisal. The trick here is that you need the home to be appraised for what you are asking the loan amount for. NOT LESS. The home could very well be worth a lot more than the asking price; but if it is; it won’t be noted on the home appraisal at this time. His job is to just make sure it is worth the asking price to appease the banks. Since the banks are investing in you; they want to make sure the house is worth the price of what they are loaning you.

Which is a good thing; because you don’t want to get the home appraisal and find out the home is worth a lot more than you are paying for it and have the seller come back and say “Oh wait a minute….I want more.”

Again…all you do is wait…

How to Buy a home part 3. Wrapping up the details

and wait…

and wait…

And stress…

and wait some more….

Everything from How to buy a house part 1 and Buy a house part 2 were all accomplished in less than 2 weeks worth of time. The rest of the time between when you enter contract and closing date is all spent on waiting.

Every now and then the loan officer will contact you and say “we need more information” or “we need more paperwork”. For us it was a lot to do with getting copies of the husband’s paychecks as they came in. And also updating our bank info as a new bank statement gets released. That sort of thing.

Expect a hiccup when you buy a home!

But even as smoothly as our process is going; everyone kept saying “Just wait! Something will go wrong. It always does”. Well they were right. So please, DO expect a hiccup and if none come; count yourself one of the lucky few.

We did end up with a hiccup. The husband’s new job messed up his paycheck and it caused all kinds of issues with the home loan. This is when I entered panic mode. They hadn’t changed his pay status to the higher pay rate he is suppose to be getting so his paycheck is a lot lower than it is suppose to be. It’s military..they haven’t “finished the paperwork” to get him assigned to his new hiring status. Go figure.

So that was going to push the home buying process out of the timeline and not allow us to close on our original closing date. In fact it would delay us a good 2 weeks!

As you can imagine; I was not a happy camper. We had already gave notice on our old home. Scheduled to turn on utilities at the new house in our name and turn off at the old house on the day after closing. We had already scheduled the moving truck. Now what?

Through a miraculous blessing and the amazing help of our loan officer; we took track #2; and through a lot more paperwork, more stress and 3 days of rush time; we got the underwriter to look at the income I generate through writing/blogging.

This eventually calmed his fears of our income situation; and it made up the difference in what the husband’s paycheck mistake was lacking. And through more amazing work with our loan officer who pushed papers through like I didn’t know was possible; we were able to close on our original closing date.

It was quite nerve wracking. Because as of the night before; we still didn’t know if it was definite we would get to close or not. But that morning we got the great news; we get to close on the house!

This part, you will meet with your Realtor, and your loan officer at a title company and sign a ton of papers!

How to Buy a home part 3. Wrapping up the details

This is where I got to use my “get out of jail” card. I was in Idaho. All this needed to be done in Utah. So we planned ahead and got a special Power of Attorney for the husband to use and he got to sign for me.

Once signing is complete; they process the paperwork; get the sellers signatures on everything, then send it through the right channels. The bank sends the money for the loan and then the home gets listed in YOUR name on the records. This usually takes 1 business day from when you close. We closed and signed papers on Thursday at noon; and the home was in our name by 3 pm on Friday. We now can occupy the home. YEAH!

Congratulations! If you made it this far…You are now a home owner!

Now let all the fun of owning a home and turning the house into a home begin!

What are your top tips of advice for this stage when it comes to buy a home?

 

 

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18 Comments

  1. I remember playing the waiting game when I bought my house back in the day. It was so stressful.

  2. When we sold our last house I was already living down here in NC, so I gave my realtor power of attorney and he signed all the closing papers for me so I didn’t have to go back. I also didn’t want to see the new owners of the house because it hurt to let it go.

  3. That waiting game can be so hard! I plan to buy one final home in my lifetime, and will be sure to use some of the great tips you have shared.

  4. I have to say that I am so glad that we are not having to deal with this at the moment. We did back to back closings so it was pretty stressful.

  5. Yay! I like the “You are now a homeowner” part! 🙂 I don’t have the patience for paperwork. I would be totally lost if it weren’t for my hubby. He just puts forms in front of me and I sign. I just make sure my name is on everything – hee-hee

  6. This post series has been great. Luckily I am not looking at buying a house any time soon, as ours is fine for now, but my daughter and several of her friends have been following these posts as well and they’ve found them so helpful.

  7. I seriously hated the moving process the last time we did it. I may stay here til I die just so I dont have to move again!

  8. I just re-read through all of these again, it’s just so funny how similar our circumstances have been!!! Now that we’ve been married 11 years and are getting ready to do all this with a VA loan (well, in a few months at least!) these were super helpful, so thank you!

    1. I’m so glad it was helpful! It was quite a learning experience for us as we went through it. I hope to help others to better know what to expect. 🙂 I can’t wait to hear that you have a location, job and home all set up!!

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