The Homebuying Saga
We’ve all heard horror stories of so-and-so’s cousin waiting 6 months to close on a house because they found violations and something had to be built, or torn down, or resolved with the town. I don’t think any of us go into a homebuying situation expecting something like that to happen to us. This is especially true for myself, as I’ve seen my mother sell her house to buy a new one three times, and those transactions more or less go off without a hitch.
As we approach Labor Day 2021, my husband and I are still waiting to finalize the purchase of the property we submitted an offer for on Labor Day of 2020. I meant to write this post months ago, but delays got worse, and I couldn’t offer any sort of resolution. The situation has finally improved, and the end seems to be in sight.
I’m going to get started with a couple of basics of the homebuying process. When the buyer makes an offer that the seller accepts, a Contract of Sale is drawn up with a closing date and terms, and the buyer typically provides a down payment that is put in escrow. The COS gives the parties some time, in our case about a month, during which an inspection and title search are done, and the buyer secures financing.
Just about every step of this process has been drawn out and convoluted for us, beginning with the Contract of Sale.
This house was an investment property that is part of an estate. There were tenants living on the property at the time we made the offer, and they had reportedly not paid rent in over a year. The seller had not evicted them, which was respectable, especially after the pandemic started. Unfortunately the seller was not comfortable committing to a COS until the tenants had vacated, which took until December 2020 (three months after we made our offer). The Contract of Sale was signed in February for a closing date on or about March 12th.
We did our inspection shortly after making the offer, so that was all set. We also worked out the financing pretty painlessly. The last step was the title search, which came back with two violations from the town’s building inspector: a shed that was slightly larger than allowed without a permit that had not been permitted, and a balcony on the second floor that was also not permitted. Four weeks later, in the process of resolving these violations, the building inspector also noticed that the house possessed three bedrooms, but was only registered as having one with the town. He had the septic inspected and found that it was not the right size for a three bedroom house.
At this time (April 2021), we were told that the process would take three months, so we extended the lock on our terrific mortgage rate and prepared to wait three months. We were disappointed, but had already been waiting a long time, and still had a lease on our apartment until October 1st. In mid May we were informed that the engineer expected that the process would take at least ten months with approvals.
At the end of July, with our mortgage rate expiring, we checked in with our team (real estate agent and attorney) to see if there was an updated timeline. In June, the engineer had informed the seller that they were waiting on the Department of Health to approve their plan before doing some tests, but the department was backlogged because they shut down during the Covid-19 shutdowns. It turns out this was not true, as our real estate agent reached out to the DOH and they informed her there was no project on their desk for this property. In fact, engineers blamed the DOH so often for hold ups, that they had created a portal where you can search for open projects on any property in the county.
After months of being patient, we had finally reached our limit. We checked in with our team every day to see if they could gather updates, and the engineer finally got the tests they needed to do before they could even submit plans to the Department of Health. Unfortunately the results of this test were bittersweet. It is not possible to install a larger septic due both to space, and the wetlands across the street.
This pretty much catches us up to now. We are trying to work out if the property can at least be updated to two bedrooms with the town, and if the price of the sale changes. The good news is that we will not be waiting on an engineer. The bad news is that we still don’t have a solid timeline, and just about everything (including the inspection and appraisal) will need to be done again.
And here we are on August 28th, and we will have to sign another year lease on our apartment. Our landlord will not let us switch to a monthly agreement, but we will be able to leave our lease should we find someone to take it over. I imagine it will be pretty easy to fill an apartment with a yard with no broker fee in Bushwick.
While this story is not over yet, I am hopeful that I’ll be back here with an update very soon.
