An Expensive Month To Move

In case you have not heard, we are building a new home.  Getting the exact date that we would have possession of this new home (and therefore when we could start moving) has been difficult.  We needed it 60 days in advance since our current lease indicates that is the amount of notice that we have to give.  Getting the builder to commit to a date that far in advance was not possible.  In the end we made a guess of Feb 4th and as it turns out we were not that far off as our closing date is scheduled for Feb 7th.  That happens to be a Friday so I confirmed with our landlords that we could push the date back a bit until Feb 10th so as to allow us a few days to move.  Our lease does not stipulate specifically what a partial month payment should be so I simply asked my landlords to provide a number.  Let’s say that I pay $1,000 in rent each month.  That is $12,000 per year.  Dividing by 365 would give us a per day cost of $32.88.  Our rent for 10 days would then be $328.80.  However, February happens to be the month we are moving in so this complicates matters.  What the landlord did (and I do not blame him) was to divide $1,000 by 28 for a per day cost of $35.71 and a 10 day rent total of $357.10 which is $28.30 more.  So, on top of all the other expenses with building / buying a new home and moving, I get this little extra bonus of a fee.

Speaking of painful things involved in this process, dealing with a lender.  My involvement with a lender started about 18 months ago when I asked my bank to look into whether or not I could refinance my Indiana property.  I filled out a form online and a few days later got a very large envelope with about 20 pages (if memory serves) of charts, tables and explanations.  Bottom line: I did not have enough credit history to get a credit score.  We signed up for a credit card from our bank and began charging stuff, not so much for refinancing but in anticipation of buying a home here in Texas after we had sold the home in Indiana.  Previous to that we had not had a credit card at all for a few years.

Fast forward to a few months ago when we had to pick a lender.  The incentives offered from the builder to use their preferred lender made this a no brainer on the surface but I did shop around a bit and the other lenders basically told me that I should use the lender preferred by the builder as they could not match any of their numbers.  Everything was OK until we locked our rate 45 days out and then the request for documentation began.  Most things that were asked for were understandable but 2 of them seemed over the top.

1. A copy of a check from last month that appeared as a deposit in my checking account statement that I provided to them.  I borrowed from my 401k account to help with the down payment and closing costs.  Despite telling my lender about this in advance (like 4 months ago) and despite providing a quarterly statement from my 401k provider that matched the deposit amount, they still wanted a copy of the check.  Now, I did not have the foresight to make a copy of this check and I did point out that IF they KNEW they would need a copy of this check then THEY could have told me when I told them about this check 4 months ago.  In the end, I chased this from both the issuer of the check and with my bank (a credit union actually) and thankfully the credit union came through quickly (with a bonus of only having to pay a $1 fee for this service).
2. Proof that I sold a house from 2006.  This one was a little strange.  I have bought a few houses in my life (4 to be exact) and I have never been asked to prove that I sold some previous house (other than say the one I was selling in order to move into the new house).  They (the lender) claimed that their fraud checking service caught this and as such the wanted me to prove that I had indeed sold this house.  In the end, not even my title company from 2006 could provide this document and the lender decided to take the risk of me lying about selling this house.

This paperwork is not limited to the lender, our home owner’s insurance company asked for a bunch of stuff as well (with the added complexity of switching our car insurance over the them).  Add that to getting down to crunch time with the builder and you can see how one might be overwhelmed.  At times like this I like to think like I do before a dentist visit: in just a little bit this will all be over and you will be in a better place (in this case literally) when this is all said and done.

Jon