Today we got a call from our loan arranger letting us know the deal was complete and the docs were on their way to be recorded at the county courthouse. Exhausted, our reaction has been somewhat subdued; I don’t think it’s fully sunk in that we in fact, did purchase a house in Lindsborg.
I want to extend a special thank you to the real-estate agent and banker who helped shepherd us through the process of purchasing a home via long-distance. All things considered, it was a relatively simple and straight-forward transaction. They answered all our questions, dealt with all of our concerns, returned all emails and voice mails, and overall were simply excellent to work with.
Thank you, Carol from Lindsborg Realty and Randy from The Mortgage Company, Salina. It was a real pleasure doing business with both of you and I’d highly recommend your services to anyone buying or financing a house in the area.
In addition, we had great service from the house inspector, Tony from Amerispec Home Inspections; the local State Farm Insurance agent’s staff, in particular, Kali ; the surveyor who did our flood plain work, Melanie from McPherson Engineering and Land Surveying Services; and last, but not least, the plumber who took care of the minor issues noted during the inspection, Mark from Royal Flush Plumbing.
Rounding out the list, Rolland from Swedish Painters painted our skylights; Dale, the builder of the house, answered some of our questions; our cousin Gary provided another Kansas Realtor’s perspective; and finally, Linda got the house freshened up in anticipation of our arrival.
Our household goods leave on Monday or Tuesday, the 20th or 21st, and will arrive on the 27th or 28th, as will we!
We’ve hopefully got the signing/closing date issues resolved, and are scheduled to sign on Friday and close on Monday. It turned out it was just one of those things that can happen when doing a long-distance real-estate transaction. There were multiple parties involved and differing interpretations of effective dates. Anyway, we’ll find out Monday.
We’ve made lots of progress on other fronts. We had a very laborious Labor Day weekend, both packing and cleaning; I emptied one of the 2 rooms that are mostly my responsibility and made major progress on the other. As a result we’ve filled a 20 cubic yard dumpster with things we aren’t moving back!
We had been planning on renting a 24-26 foot truck and towing our car behind it. To a large degree this was based on control/timing issues. We wanted to arrive at the same time as our belongings. Our other reasonable option was to rent space on a semi-trailer, do the loading and unloading ourselves, and let them do the driving. We’ve decided to go that route even though is a day or 3 of uncertainty as to when the shipment will arrive. Well, after losing a week’s time due to the paperwork snafu, we’re more comfortable with the variable timing that comes with letting someone else do the driving. Plus, I don’t have to drive a large truck with another car being towed behind!
With the change in how we’re transporting our household comes a change in the timing of our arrival. At this point it appears out goods will arrive on Monday the 27th, or perhaps on the 28th. We’ll leave mid-afternoon the 24th and arrive sometime between Sunday and Tuesday, depending on both the arrival date of the truck and how much sight-seeing we do along the way.
at least not today. We were supposed to close today, the 7th of September. We signed all the papers on Friday, had them notarized, etc and sent them off for arrival and recording today.
Except that that most wonderful of consumer loan companies, US Bank (bad company, no link), screwed up the paperwork so bad that we may not close till the 13th. We get to redo the hourlong signing and notarizing process and put our plans on hold for another week.
I expected the unexpected during the 6 weeks while we arranged the funding, had inspections performed, etc. I did not expect a colossal screwup by the bank.
I should have known, though. US Bank is apparently immoral as well as incompetent. One of the forms I signed on Friday indicated that they would spam me without mercy unless I wrote them a letter explicitly requesting to be removed from the lists I never signed up for in the first place.
Ah well, another life lesson here: the unexpected happens, by definition, when unexpected!
One of the earliest web pages I created focused on Lindsborg, with a few photos and links to Lindsborg area attractions. Though that page is no longer current, I did rescue this photo of Lindsborg from the air that I created almost 10 years ago. Based on a scan from a local calendar, I added the (now somewhat dated) annotations. Our house isn’t visible in this photo; it’s to the left/north of the Bethany Lutheran church.
You can click on the image to see a larger version.
Thanks to whomever provided the original photo; contact me and I’ll give you specific credit.
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