It can happen to you.

My brother in law and his wife recently moved into a new house. They moved about 3-4 months ago. They told us horror stories about sitting out in front of their bank mere hours before closing, waiting for the call from the mortage company to give them their closing number. They were on the phone with them that morning while the company said they were still working the numbers.

Oh my god, we exclaimed. That's horrible. I bet that was totally stressful. That company is a bunch of jerkholes.

Yes, don't use them.

Now it's our turn. Our house sold in less than 12 hours, we got full price and the buyers were already approved. The place we were buying was priced to sell and was not taking contigency offers. They wanted to move and move quickly. We'd been house hunting for 3 months previous and had already started working with the mortgage company two months before even finding a house.

It is now less than 24 hours from our appointed closing time and our mortage lender hasn't given us a number. You heard right. They've had almost two months to work on this and yet it's the 11th hour and still no official number. Well, there is a number, but it changes with the wind and could threaten to push our closing date back a day or more.

Our utlities will be cut off in two days. Our phone number will change. Our mail will go to the new house. There will be cable and phone people at the new house in two days. We will have movers at the old house at 9am on Thursday. Our temporary lease to the new buyers runs out on the 21st.

And the mortgage company doesn't have a number for us.

Our entire house is in the garage or in boxes.

And the mortgage company doesn't have a number for us.

Apparently, our PMI has changed. Mortgage insurance. It's changed. What they thought it was, isn't. It's going to be more. More. On the day before closing it jumped by $200, making our mortgage exceed the limit of our income just enough to where we can still afford it, but only if we don't eat.

I'm super pissed. Mrs. A is sick on top of all of this. These guys had two months. We gave them everything they asked for within 12 hours of them asking. Sometimes on the same day. We were originally going to close on June 30th, shouldn't they have been ready by then?

This whole process has been one big clusterfuck. We waited and waited and waited for various parties to contact us with anything they'd need; paperwork, signatures, deposits. All we asked is that they keep us informed. I feel like no one in this situation has had our best interest at heart, they only want their points or percentage or money.

Had our realtor told us that our buyers had already closed, we could have told the mortgage company and got them to start sooner. Had the mortgage company asked for all the paperwork they needed up front instead of one piece every week for 5 weeks, they'd be done by now. Aren't we paying these guys? Aren't we giving them several hundred to several thousand dollars to make this work? We have decent credit, we pay our bills on time, we only have one paid off credit card. We own a home, we make good money. Why is this so fucking difficult to figure out?

It's the DAY BEFORE CLOSING!!! We're sitting in front of a bank waiting for you to call and give us a number, the number you said you'd have a month ago. Not a number that's three times what you promised us, not a number as we walk into the title company office. What's wrong with you people?

If I did my job like this, I'd be fired.

And I can't understand it. The first time we bought a house, it was a snap. Loan went through great. We got an awesome rate, all we had to do was fix a few things on our credit. So now, we've had a mortgage for three years AND have fixed part of our credit and yet we're having problems. So, the next time (and trust me, there won't fucking be a next time) my guess is that we'll have owned the home for 20-30 years and refinanced or paid it off and we'll go to buy a boat and it'll take 7 years to get a loan and it'll cost 175,000 dollars. That's apparently how the system works. The more you work, the harder you have to work next time.

Sunsabitches!