And the hits keep coming

So for today's house drama...at 7:30am I got a phone call from the General Contractor. I didn't answer the phone because I was sleeping, which is what any normal person does on a Saturday morning. I called him back later, anticipating he would tell me he had completed the FHA paperwork. I could not have been more shocked to hear the following..."Uh, yeah- I'm lookin' at that list of things you needed and uh, this job is only for $2,000, and uh...I just don't think it's worth it." NICE! I'm freaking two weeks away from close and he chooses NOW to bail on me?! It's not that I don't understand the irritation involved in working w/ this loan. Believe me, I get it. If he thinks what they're requiring him to do is difficult, he should see what they're asking from me.

Just 8 weeks ago I lived in blissful ignorance of the reality of buying a house. I had just secured financing and put in an offer on "my" house so surely we could take care of the formalities and wrap this up in about 10 days, right? My mortgage lady, M, immediately started giving off a negative vibe. She herself had bought a house in need of repairs and her experiences were coloring her opinions. She warned me off but given my absolute determination, we proceeded to the home inspection. The inspector was very thorough, looking in every nook & cranny. Who knew this would turn out to be a bad thing? His report was 61 pages! The house needed to be re-wired but the other items were trivial. That didn't matter to the bank. They were out and I was left to find another lender. Which is how I ended up in this special kind of hell called the FHA 203k rehab loan, by all accounts the most difficult loan product out there.

The 203k loan allows you to purchase a house and obtain the funds to renovate right away, all in one mortgage. Sounds great! Until you get to the details, that is. The way this works is the purchaser must obtain bids for each item to be repaired, then a second set of bids for the same work, one set as the primary bids, the others will be supporting bids. The two sets of bids need to be in the same ballpark or they won't be approved. Fine, bids obtained, let's move on to the next step. The bids are reviewed for acceptability and now they want the contractors to adjust the bids to give the length of time to completion and the statement "includes all labor & materials." Fine, bids rewritten. Oh, wait- one of the bids needs to be typed because we just can't read his handwriting. Okay, I'll play along and go back to the contractor. Glad we're done w/ that and can move on. The next step? Go back to the contractors for a third time to request just a few items- liability insurance, license, references, worker's comp insurance and let's have them sign a contract as well. And remember the one w/ poor penmanship? Let's have him tell us exactly what kind of water heater he's going to install. I mean, really? As long as I know what's going in who the hell cares? His response was classic "Do they want to know what color underwear I'll be wearing when I work on your house?!"

And at this point is when the General Contractor (one of my three contractors- electrician, plumber, general) decides he's out. Yes, I get it, this has been one giant pain in the ass for all of us but here I am, two weeks away from close and back to square one.