Today we’re supposed to close on our house. I’m cautiously ooptimistic about it since we had the closing delayed last minutes before. I thought it might be interesting to keep a diary of the day, both as a personal record for us (it’s our first house!) and a reference for any readers buying a house.
Pre-Closing Jitters
5ish am: I’m awake, but I stay in bed because I know I should getting some sleep. I can’t sleep, though, and I’m running through my head everything that we have to do today for closing. We have to do the final walk through at 8:30am, get our certified check, and then go to the settlement office.
6:44 am: I wake up and head to the bathroom to put in my contacts and start getting ready.
6:54am: My husband is still asleep, so I go ahead and start writing this blog post to pass the time.
7:26am: Husband is up and taking a shower while I’m reviewing the HUD-1 settlement statement for the the dozenth time since yesterday. I wanted to make sure that nothing went against the Good Faith Estimate we were given before.
7:52am: We leave to get coffee and go for the final walk through.
8:13am: We’re waiting in line at Starbucks. I’m worrying that we’ll be late since it is packed in the place, but the line runs like a well oiled machine and we get our coffee (tall and venti bold coffee with room) quickly. I realize that I put way to much sugar in my coffee when it’s easier to just batch open 6 packets of sugar in the raw. Oh well. We head to the house.
Final Walk Through and Getting the Certified Check
8:27am: We arrive at our future place and meet with Ryan to go through and check to see if all the items we requested fixed are done. We start at the top floor and work our way down. The place looks great and the stove that had scratches has been replaced. We go through the list and initial that they did all the work they said they would.
We review the builder’s warranty with the place and thank Ryan for his help. We call our real estate agent (he’s coming from out of town) to tell him the place looks good. We head over to Wachovia to get our certified check.
9:05am: Another surprise: no line at the bank. We give the information to the teller and we’re given the check.
9:18am: It seems like we’re ahead of schedule and debate whether to get there early or just drive around. We both agree to head to the lawyer’s office. We arrive and meet up with our real estate agent. The lawyer is ready in a few minutes and all of us get started with the closing.
Settlement Appointment
9:28am: In case you weren’t aware, there is a lot of paperwork that comes with a house. The lawyer is explaining the papers as we read them. I admit we should’ve been reading more slowly, but we were overwhelmed with all the information. Paperwork covered:
- The Contract
- The Loan
- Deed of Trust
- Homeowner’s warranty
- Homeowner’s insurance
- Termite certificate
- Title insurance
10:50am We’re home soaking in being ‘home loaners’. We call family and some friends to let them know of the good news. Funny thing, we mentioned we’ll use the tax credit to pay down our mortgage and the consensus is ‘why? ‘ My answer: We want to pay mortgage early and we have no high interest debt.
Some people are surprised about not having credit card debt or a car loan. Guess we’re not normal.
Reviewing all the Paperwork
8:00 pm: Spending time reviewing the paperwork from closing. It all looks good and I don’t see anything different than what was agreed upon. In case you’re curious we have a 30-year fixed rate FHA mortgage with a 5% interest rate. Since it’s fixed, our interest rate will remain the same the entire life of the mortgage.
Your Take
How did your closing/settlement go with your house?
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If you ever want to make the process even more fun, try closing on a house with power of attorney. On our current house, we didn’t want to drag all the kids 300+ miles to close two days before the move, so my wife granted me power of attorney. The problem was that I had to sign a bajillion documents twice, and when I signed her name, I had to sign something like ” Power of Attorney for .” Not fun.
Ugh, that comment ate some of my text. It should have read “My Name & Power of Attorney for Her Name”
Wow, that is insane. I have a very long name so that got tedious with all the paperwork. I did not know you could do that with closing.