Why I don’t know what buying a HUD owned home is really like…

To call the buying process of Main Street “a shit show” would be an understatement.

I actually left the realtor’s office asking “so did we just close on Main Street House or not?”

Even though our closing was Friday at 2pm, at this moment in time (4 days after closing), I can’t actually tell you what buying a HUD owned home is like because we technically still haven’t closed on our house. Check out my Facebook page for updates through out the day on whether we actually close.

So before I go any further into this… The moral of this story (ahem, blog post) is DO NOT buy a HUD owned home — unless you want to go bald from ripping your hair out, have a stress induced heart attack or get fat eating ALL THE ICE CREAM, because of a little thing called stress eating — then by all means go for it!

Our abysmal excuse for a “closing” wound up being this:

• First and most annoying… we didn’t even know if we were actually scheduled to close on Friday until Wednesday night at 9:20pm!

 

• So we took off from work for the whole day because closing was originally supposed to be at 9am but it was switched last minute to 2pm —  which was done just in case HUD didn’t have their shit together (obviously they still didn’t, even at 2pm)… and since we’re self employed there is no such thing as paid sick or vacation days, so it’s kind of a double whammy for us.

 

• We drove 45 minutes to the realtor’s office — with me panicking in the passenger seat because the GPS now says it takes 47 minutes to get there instead of only 41 and we’re going to be 6 minutes late. AND I HATE BEING LATE. You can be late, I’m fine with that. But I hate to be late.

 

• We then stood outside the realtors office (which was closed? – weird) waiting for 15 minutes for the relator to actually show, because he was LATE. And when he did show, he was wearing a ratty Bob Seger t-shirt, white socks up to just below his knees and a 5-o’clock shadow which was more like a 4 day old shadow.

 

• Once we were inside, we were informed that we’d have to “sit tight and wait” because the last “small item” needed was still pending in the system. It was explained to us like this: First and most important, our realtor is experienced in REO and regular sales but not in HUD homes, so basically we’re his first closing with this type of sale. He was told on Wednesday afternoon at 3pm that HUD requires “final inspection pictures” 24 hours before closing. Which meant he had to go to the house, take and upload pictures of the house by 9am the following morning. HUD is then supposed to log in to the system and “approve” the final inspection pictures by 9am the day of closing. Once we see that the final inspection is approved, we are all set and can close. He’s been calling and emailing all day trying to get someone to approve it but to no avail.

 

• Now being 2:45pm, we’re told we should probably just go ahead and sign the paperwork, which wound up being ONE PIECE of paper -I’ve signed more paperwork to get my hair done.

 

• We also handed over a sizable amount of money but were told that if the approval doesn’t come through by 5pm, we would have to wait until Tuesday — and to top it off, we’d probably have to sign new paperwork making Friday an absolute waste of time because it meant nothing.

 

• At 5pm the system still shows it as pending and we would have to wait until Tuesday. The waiting is the worst part… we were totally ready to get in there over the long weekend and get to work but because the government sucks we couldn’t. So we lost a whole long weekend of working on getting the apartment ready for rent and as every day passes, the vines that are crawling up the house and around the yard and garage are just getting longer and longer.

 

• Fast forward to Sunday at 10:15am – I get a text from the realtor saying the system has been updated to approved status. But we still have to wait until Tuesday for HUD’s final approval… um okay, I thought all we were waiting on was the system to show approved? I am utterly confused.

 

• So today is Tuesday and we had to take another day off from work because we most likely have to sign a new HUD sheet and then meet the realtor at the house to change the locks (or they’ll charge about $300 for a locksmith to do it, um no thanks, we’re perfectly capable of changing locks). But as I’m publishing this it’s about 9:30am and no word from the realtor yet… so we’ll see what else this shit show throws our way.