Boldly going, and all that

Well, on May 26th, I turned 35. And so, my hubby took the wee one and I out to see the new "Star Trek" film

Oh. My.

I loved it---not all aspects of it, to be sure. (Hello, Vulcan's sky is *red*, thankyouverymuch.) But the interplay among the characters and the new actors who play them is wonderful. These are, and aren't, the characters we've known and love, and the reboot has some intriguing possibilities.

And as for Spock and Uhura...wow. That works pretty well too. There was always a lot of flirtation among them in the original series---at least, in the early episodes (and before, I suspect, some suit at NBC flipped a grip over the concept of an African-American woman-gasp!-flirting with a half-human/half-alien---GASP!) So it follows over pretty well.

The wee one, however, was somewhat less impressed (though she did really like the Enterprise.) And no, we weren't one of "those" parents--we went to the earliest show, and sat way in the back so we didn't disturb anyone, and kept her supplied with goldfish crackers and munchies to keep her busy. She was pretty good, for the most part, and a good time was had by all. :)

And you couldn't have thought of this...three weeks ago?

Welcome to the irony that is our life at times. :) Yesterday, FHA (the underwriters for our mortage loan) announced they were starting a program to allow their buyers to use the $8000 tax credit for first time homebuyers as part of their downpayment.

Yeah. That would have been nice to have had say, last month. Grrr.

But the more I think about it, maybe we dodged a bullet. The house we lost was lovely (really lovely, I have the pics to prove it *sigh*) but while I don't believe in the concept of god (or gods) acting as real estate agents (though the picture of Cernunnos in a three piece suit is highly amusing,) I do think things happen pretty much for a reason, and the way that they're supposed to. I wonder if we'd moved in there, if we would have found something that the home inspection didn't pick up or wouldn't have discovered...and if that had happened, how would we have paid for it?

And yeah, I know those worries are SOP with houses of any age. But having loved and lost one house on what seems, even now, to be perfectly goofy grounds, I have to think that something else was going on. Maybe this will free us to find the house that is for us. But in the meantime, we're regrouping and healing and saving. That's the best we can do for now. :)

Letting Go...

Yeah, we lost the house. Well, I'm not sure you can say we really "lost" it, since technically, we never should have had it in the first place, but more on that later.

Monday, we got news that the down payment/closing cost program had declined us because didn't have enough debt. (Irony, much?) So after that, there really wasn't much else we could do, so we pulled the plug.

And it hurts, in ways I never thought it would. We've been through such a rollercoaster with this house, and now to find out that it was all for pretty much nothing...yeah. It hurts. And it makes us both angry, because the one thing that could have saved us all this angst was if our broker had done his job and called the agency which administers the program and asked them if we qualified. He didn't, but was more than happy to keep telling us we'd qualify. I'm not sure if he was sure we would, or if he was just ignorant, but whatever. We're back where we started now.

So now we're getting practice in letting go. We've been through worse things in our marriage, so I'm not worried on that score. It's just the letting go and starting over that's hard.

With much crossing of fingers and toes...

...we're not quite out of the housing market. Yet. :)

Our realtor and I had a talk the day after this whole thing blew up...by putting our respective heads together, we came up with something that might---might---end up saving the house for us (ethically.) In a nutshell, the county agency which administers our down payment programs has never seen our file. In other words, the lender (from the bank that bought First Unethical Bank of California) was telling us that we wouldn't qualify for the down payment program due to some mythical (and esoteric) formula, but he didn't really know, because the agency didn't even have our file.

Yeah. I'd call that a small detail, wouldn't you?

And it might be a long shot, and a failed one at that. The lender could be right, yadda, yadda. But he could be wrong. So it's our last shot, but one we needed to take. So we did.

And ethically, I'll feel a lot better in either case. If it fails, we know we tried everything. If it doesn't fail, and we can get into the house on terms that work for us, then we did something right and ethical to get there.

The ethics of the whole thing really made me think. In real estate, as in life, there are a lot of grey areas and things which can be done which are not, precisely, illegal or unethical, but are bumping up mighty hard against that line. And that's a kind of karma (for lack of a better term) that we really don't want. Karma like that has a bad way of following you around.

Or put another way: whatever you put out, comes back three times over...so it's best to be mighty careful about what you put out in the universe. If we get the house ethically, then that's fine. If we don't...it wasn't meant to be. And we'll regroup and try again later.

But for now, we're content, knowing we did the best we could with what we have.

We've lost the house

Barring a major miracle tomorrow, we will no longer be almost-homeowners. :-(

Our funding has completely fallen through; the lenders our broker went to had no problems approving us for a mortgage but they've all refused to deal with the first time homebuyer's program we need. So two weeks before closing...we're SOL.

(And yes, I've noticed the bitter, galling irony that the same banks that beg the government for help are the same ones who won't bend to help us now. Grrrr.)

I can't say our realtor and the broker aren't trying to be creative in helping us, but since we don't have a rich uncle or a money tree growing in the back yard, we're pretty much screwed. It would take us about five grand to get into the place without the down payment/closing cost assistance, and who has that these days? No one, that's who. And even if they did...who would just give it to us? No one, again. My parents would, if they had it, but they don't. Rob's dad would, if he had it, but he's developing some pretty serious health issues and so, if he had it, we wouldn't ask.

So I'm heartsick. And disappointed. I don't think we could have seen this coming but I still feel like maybe I was stupid to think it would work out after all. We did our best, but sometimes, it just ain't good enough.

Enchanted, Enraptured, Embalmed...

...with mucho apologies to the Three Stooges, but it pretty much describes our whole home issue right about now.

After a one week period in which we were contractually obligated to buy a house (but had no lender,) and after many scurrying of emails between our realtor, our broker, and the new lender...we now have a lender. And it's not First Unethical Bank of California, but the bank that bought First Unethical Bank of California, so that's not precisely ideal from an ethical standpoint. But at this point...if we want the house (and we do) we sort of have to roll with it.

The newer wrinkle, though, is simply this: the downpayment assistance program we qualify for has its own set of guidelines, and we may (or may not) meet those...and we won't find out about that unti this coming week. And if we do meet the guidelines, we may not qualify for the maximum amount of downpayment assistance.

Oh, and the new lender has been slower than snail trail in getting us a good faith estimate---this is crucial because he's quoted us a mortgage price that makes both of us question what numbers he's using to make this all happen.

So many things are up in the air, and sometimes, it's (unintentionally, I'm sure) funny. Like the revelation that at least one calculation has my husband and I not having enough debt to qualify for downpayment assistance. With one car, two credit cards and a student loan debt hairy enough to be mistaken for Sasquatch...we don't have enough debt?!?!? Good grief. :-/

But it's like our realtor said (and I tend to trust her over our broker---they're married, but he's sort of...well, an idjit at times): everything thus far is fixable and so far, we're on track. So we just have to keep plugging along.

I'm tired. Rob's tired. We knew this whole "buying a house thing" was going to be a rollercoaster, but we could have done with a little less drama. :)