Plan B

I keep waiting to write this post because I'm holding out hope for a happy ending with Daisy, but we're having some issues. Again. The story goes... we have been waiting for this letter from the seller's bank for weeks now which is the only thing holding up the sale of this house to us. This letter is the "terms of the short sale approval" which is just boilerplate language that gives us the paperwork detailing what the bank has already told us (that the short sale has been approved at the price we offered, and that they're paying out 3K to the second loan. Dandy, we'll take it.). We had our first negotiator take about two months to go through the entire approval process, he gave us the glorious word that they accepted it, and said the letter was being issued and sent. Fast forward a few weeks to our closing date week, the listing agent contacts him to ask where the letter is and he basically says "I don't know what you're talking about. I don't have that file and I didn't approve it." Heart, drop.

After the listing agent panics and calls the short sale department to get to the bottom of it, she finds out our file has been pulled from that negotiator for whatever reason and reassigned to a new negotiator. She calls this woman and finds out that she didn't even know the file was assigned to her. After hearing the story, she feels bad (I think) and whips through the file taking two days to approve was the last guy took two months to do. Patience, thinning.

She says the letter will be issued in 7-10 days but will try to speed it up to 3-5 days because of our situation. Great! 5 business days pass, listing agent calls to find out the status of the letter (mind you- at this point we're right up against our interest rate lock expiring AND the second loan's approval also expiring- both which would cost money to get extensions on, hence our urgency) and finds out that the bank decided to re-pull the seller's credit for some reason. From what I understand, his credit is fairly good considering, and they think he doesn't really qualify for having a short sale and that he could have been making his mortgage payments. Um... why is this being discovered now?? And not the last TWO times this short sale has been approved??

So they want $20,000 from the seller which he's not going to pay. Our realtor and the listing agent pleaded our case to the bank on Friday so we're hoping to hear from them today. We want them to realize that they are Bank of America and have f***ed up this deal so royally that they cannot go back on what they have already promised us TWICE. We want them to realize that we're good buyers, with a 26% down payment and a 30 year fixed loan WITH BANK OF AMERICA so they'll be getting their money they're losing on this short sale back in our interest easily. We want them to realize that if they won't allow the sale of this house to us, the house will likely go into foreclosure and they will make a lot LESS money on it. We want them to realize that we have everything on our end ready and waiting to draw up the loan documents and sign them and given their approval letter, we can close in two days. TWO DAYS and this can all be over Bank of America. Do it.

So with all of our stuff in green boxes that have to be given back, and new renters waiting at the door to move in, we're running out of time. After Jeff and I talked about the stronger possibility of us not getting the Daisy house, we had to talk about a Plan B- renting. We came to peace with the idea of renting a kick-ass apartment in Belmont Shore, our favorite part of LB, right on the water and close to our friends Jerod and Karen and 2nd street restaurants and shops. As we thought more about it, we got more excited. We looked at rentals this weekend and found a beautiful Spanish apartment just one block up from the beach. It's big and has a nice dining room that would fit our table, and it has huge gorgeous windows. The downside is the carpet in the bedrooms, but a ton of throw rugs could remedy that. Plus a $500 pet deposit. Oh Lily...

Here are a few pictures of our Plan B: 

Check out that window! Beautiful hardwood floors and lots of dappled light thanks to the huge tree out in front. It's pretty lovely.

The bathroom is really clean and the apartment has the cool built-in storage everywhere. The kitchen is gigantic too with a ton of storage, and a nook for another table! We're going to submit our application this afternoon provided we don't hear any good Daisy news before. Another Daisy option that we're exploring is having the seller let us move in to Daisy while we wait for the bank to straighten all of this out. Noelle thinks this may be an option. But if it isn't, Belmont Shore, here we come!