Flutterby™! : too late for the pebbles to vote 2007-12-27 00:36:40.180708+00

too late for the pebbles to vote

2007-12-27 00:36:40.180708+00 by Dan Lyke 9 comments

Just got back from "the signing" (wasn't that a Jack Nicholson movie?) and gave the final wiring instructions. On the way home Charlene referred to "signing books", which was shortly corrected to papers, but, yeah, it was like that. If everything goes as planned we end up owing a lot of money backed by an asset with sinking fungibility, by this time Friday.

When you go into the 'closing' you will sign a lot of papers. And you will feel pressed to hurry because - well you know they want you to hurry so you won't read anything.

What I have done often is ask to go in a day ahead of time and sign. This way you can read everything - are you sure you want to do this? -- at your own speed. They do this all the time.

Ziffle: Have you ever found anything in closing that required a change in the paperwork? I mean, has the reading been worth it?

I personally have found real crap in the earlier paperwork - like a term life insurance policy for the first five years tacked onto the loan principal so I'd be paying for it over 30 years.

the "pressure" to hurry and sign is so you don't read the fine print slowly or realize that there are percents(s)added on the "backside" of the interest rate that spreads your money around to all kinds of people and costs YOU the buyer more money in the long run....damn mortgage companies/brokers.

another thing some loan companies are good at is not setting up an escrow account when you have requested one that include your insurance and property taxes...that isn't mentioned until you are almost finished reading the "book" and time is running out. makes me think of those tv ads for the "slicer and dicer for only $19.99 and if you call in the next 15 minutes you get this free...but don't wait, time is running out! HURRY!"

did a short stint as a loan originator for a local mortage broker...had the escrow thing pop up at the last minute. the home owners were pissed, BUT they waited until the last minute to decide about the loan then the loan company played the "see what we can remove game"...what a mess. i quit shortly after that. wasn't worth the stress.

We think this was the day of all of the final signing. There's nothing left to sign, now we're in the funding phase. We were actually surprised that there was only one document that had substantive information that we hadn't already seen (and been over fairly thoroughly). I was worried about loan terms, but even though they could have they didn't make us set up a tax/insurance escrow, they didn't slip in any term life or similar stuff. It was fairly straight ahead and our loan broker's amount was actually reasonable.

The only weirdness we found in our hours and hours of reading was 8 pages of the history of the title company exclusions, almost but not quite identical, tacked on to the back of the title search.

We had a good title company for our closings (multiple, because we refi'd a couple of times while rates were plummeting) and didn't come across anything hinky, for what it's worth. At the original closing, our exclusive buyer agent was there with us, and at the subsequent 2 refis (where you sign basically the same set of paperwork), the title agent who walked us through the documents was superb. Also, for what it's worth, we've had a very good experience with Wells Fargo (who holds our mortgage) - once early on they asked if we wanted some clever little ARM and we just said "no - fixed 30 year is what we want" and that was that. No problems with either setting up the escrow account OR, more importantly, paying the taxes on time from them, either. I don't *like* that we "have" to have an escrow account (as I'd rather earn the interest myself; haven't bothered to see how hard it is to extract ourselves from it), but they haven't screwed anything up at least.

I think that experiences with this stuff vary *widely*. I found the HUD form that summarizes what all the money is for and bottom-lines for both the buyer and seller to be the most useful. We saw drafts of ours a day or two before closing and there were no surprises on the day of.

It also occurs to me that bad situations like this are reason to find a good title/escrow company. At least here in California it's their job to point out situations like that in the various contracts that you may have missed. Or at least our rep at ours took that as her personal challenge (given that we'd already found two funninesses that nobody else had noticed, turns out they were benign, but bizarre).

Our main reason for not wanting an escrow account is that my parents mortgage company did screw that up once, and it was a pain in the ass for them to fix what the escrow company had screwed up. So even though we thought we were going to be required to have one, we were pleasantly surprised when we didn't. They must have liked our credit scores.

#Comment Re: Congrats made: 2007-12-27 21:36:02.091108+00 by: shelleyp

Word of advice: don't allow the company to insert a binding mandatory arbitration clause if you're buying a home from a builder.

Congratulations. And looking ahead to a future major transition, don't buy your second home without selling your first.