PHEW! We’re finally starting to get settled and the nightmare is over! The buyers of our house made some bad choices which caused things to be delayed. Here are a couple of those.

Their realtor was Tom May of Remax. He just got his license back in August which was the first major problem. Secondly, he works with Remax which provides you with NO training what-so-ever (how many people realized that School != Reality?). Finally, their mortgage company was H&R Block. That is a company that needs to stick to tax preparation and stay the hell out of the mortgage business. What a bunch of incompetent boobs.

Here is how great my side of the house was. Joy Beckner was my agent on the selling side and Liz Rourke was my agent on the buying side. My mortgage was through Kevin King of King Global Mortgage. Many of you who know me have met Kevin.

Joy kept Tom in line while he was trying to pull all kinds of tricks. He ended up kicking back almost half of his commission (thanks to Joy) due to his own mistakes. Liz kept the sellers of our new home patient while we worked out our problems with our old house. Kevin had my loan re-underwritten in 3 hours with new terms so we could buy the new house without selling the old one. This is important because H&R block took a FULL WEEK to underwrite the loan of the buyers of our old house. We funded our closing Thursday and the one on the old house funded Friday late (we were sitting in traffic in Austin on the way to San Antonio when it actually funded and the money showed up at the title co).

So most of our plants are either dead or mostly dead. Our stuff is now beginning to be unpacked, and Chris is being a real trooper. I can’t imagine how tired she is getting after organizing the entire kitchen while almost 7 months pregnant. Also special thanks to Nono, Teri, Wade, Travis, Brent, Dad, Mom and Ashley for helping us get things together. We could not have done it without your help (we unloaded the truck starting Thursday night at 5:30ish PM).

What lessons did we learn out of this? See this list below

1. Ensure that the realtor representing your buyers/sellers (or even your realtor if you do not have an agent) is experienced! Or at the worst case, works on a team of people that can bail each other out in a pinch.
2. Use an agency that provides training (such as Keller Williams or Ebby Halliday). Even though they are all independent agents with a company name attached to them, there are a few companies that spend a little more money on their agents to ensure snafu’s like ours do not happen.
3. Don’t use just any old mortgage person. Especially not your brother’s friend’s roomate just out of college. Use someone reputable.
4. ASK FOR REFERENCES IF YOU ARE NOT SURE!
5. Ask for closing dates far apart so that you can lease the house back for a week. Had we done this, chances are the situation we were in would not have been so bad.

Ok, I may update that list more, but that’s all for now.

In other GOOD news, I did get the adjunct professor position at UD. I am now Professor Brando!! Scary eh?

Ok, back to more unpacking etc.