Toward the end of last week, as we dutifully packed the last segment of our first PODS container in preparation for the closings we hoped would take place in roughly two weeks, we received the phone call that no seller of a house ever wants to receive: our buyer had been denied his mortgage application. Now, that is bad news, right? Here we've packed up half of our house, starting (because I am an idiot sometimes) with our kids' rooms and toys, and suddenly we have no hope of selling our house to this guy. Yes, that news stunk. What stinks worse is the fact that our mortgage broker, who later looked at our buyer's numbers, said there is no way any bank would have given the guy any hope of a loan in today's lending market because his debt to loan ratio is off the charts high. He owns a 2 family in a posh little city nearby, which he was trying not to sell while buying our house.
Or was he? As the details unfold, it becomes more and more clear that he and his realtor schemed to get his contract accepted by saying he didn't need to sell; we had a contract with a 48 hour contingency that we bumped in order to accept his offer...you cannot bump a 48 hour contingency contract with another 48 hour contingency contract, so if he really wanted to buy our house he needed to be able to afford it without selling his house. We signed his contract May 18 and he had to apply for his mortgage within 5 business days. His 2 family came on the market the first week of June and we're pretty sure he would have known at that point that he needed to sell. Did he, in good faith, let us know that he would need to sell his house? No, the jerk waited until the mortgage commitment date of June 19, then went so far as to ask for an extension on the commitment date, stating the banks were backed up and needed more time.
He wasted a good month of our time, a month's worth of lost showings, a month's worth of packing, a month's worth of gearing our kids up for a move that might not happen now. A month's worth of our sellers liquidating their belongings and making preparations to move out of the country, based on us buying their house. Preparations like giving notice at jobs, renting living space in the Carribean, and shipping their car. I feel terrible and I am livid, but what can we do?
We've put our house back on the market, we're hoping our sellers will stick with us a little longer, and we're keeping our fingers crossed for a miracle. In the meantime the PODs container sits on the driveway and we've figured out how to drive around it to park in the garage (no small feat). We've pulled the house together with what furniture was left in it and had our first showing today; an open house is scheduled for tomorrow.
This is our new reality and we can only go forward from here.
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