Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Any Dream Will Do...

Remember how I said that we were moving all of our furniture from our old house into our new house this week if all the stars aligned?

Well, guess what...the stars did not align and yet another monkey wrench has been thrown into our house sale. Surprise, surprise!

Last night at 7:00pm, I got a call from our realtor telling us that our buyer can't be approved for a loan because he is in the middle of a divorce and his wife (who we were told was his EX wife, and that he had already gotten a divorce) won't let him take title in his own name without her.

I have no idea why this is just coming out NOW, when we were supposed to be closing in a few days.

This news came the night before our movers were set to arrive, to move out all of our furniture. This morning, we had to cancel our movers at the last minute (as they were showing up on our doorstep), and we have to start again from square one to put our house back on the market.

We have been living without most of our furniture for two months now. Our master bedroom is an empty room with nothing in it. We have no television, and all of our dishes are at our old house. Camping out is getting old.

On top of that, my mom is coming to visit from Indiana this weekend. We planned it so that she would have a place to sleep when she comes to visit. Now I either have to scramble and find a suitable bed for her, or she will be sleeping on the floor. Sorry, mom, our real beds are back at our place in Pasadena!

I am so angry that after almost two months of jumping through hoops for our buyer, we are now faced with a situation where just days before the close of escrow, he is walking away without owing us anything. (The loan contingency was never lifted, so we cannot collect his earnest money deposit).

I would say I am devastated...but I don't use that word lightly. Devastation for me happens on days like the one where I picked up Vivian and Annemarie's urns at the funeral home and brought their ashes back to sit on a shelf in my house.

I know it's just money, I know it's just a lot of money...but at least we're alive and healthy, and that's what really matters.

But I am kind of furious about it. This means months more of mortgage payments. I have to re-stage the house (because I took down a lot of the things already in preparation for the move). Now we have to find a new buyer. And our property now is stale because it's technically been on the market longer (even though we haven't been able to pursue other buyers because we had an accepted offer).

So, instead of closing escrow yesterday...as we originally were supposed to do...we instead found out that we are back to square one (and then some) in our home selling quest. I joked to Mr. Mustard today that it is our pad on "The Upper East Side" (but you know, the Upper East Side of LA is a little different than the Upper East Side of NYC!) It's like having a kid in college at Harvard and paying tuition payments every month...except that we don't, of course, have a kid at Harvard...not yet anyway. ;-)

joseph-1


So, this news happened right as I was walking out the door to take Paprika to see Joseph and The Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. It's playing at the Civic Light Opera, and I knew she would love it. She did love it!

We lowered the average age in the auditorium by about 70 years, and she was the only little kid to make it past intermission. (There was a family with a 5 year old and a 7 year old but they left at intermission because the 5 year old couldn't sit still).

So, at age 3, Paprika did a pretty awesome job.

The show was beautiful, and Paprika sat wide-eyed on the edge of her seat the whole show. At intermission, she was dancing in the aisles, and wanted to go down to see the instruments in the orchestra pit.

When the show ended, a hush fell over the audience, and Paprika exclaimed, "That was FANTASTIC!" And the whole audience laughed.

It was a wonderful few hours, and I spent it enjoying watching Paprika watch the show. She was as entertaining to me as what was going on on-stage. Some days I just want to drink in her wide-eyed wonder and excitement.

I also kept looking for the deeper message in the show, wondering if it could give me some perspective on our housing situation...and it kinda did. What the heck are ya gonna do? Just do your best and that's all you can do, right? Right...


4 comments:

FourJedis said...

Aww, E, I'm so, so sorry about the deal falling through. I have been there before and it's really frustrating, but like you say, what can ya do? We had someone put a contract on our old house for 3 months then back out, and then threaten to sue us for the earnest money. In the end we probably could have gotten it had we gone through legal hoops and roller coasters, but Anakin had just hatched and dealing with dishonest and corrupt people was not on my agenda during my babymoon.

Regarding the stale listing, you should ask your agent to pull your listing for 24 hours and then put it back on the market again. I don't know if you are able to do that in CA, but you certainly can in SC (but we are inbred rednecks).

Paprika continues to amaze me with her maturity and independence... as well as her humor and creative mind. You've done so well with your girls.

The Mama said...

That sucks! If I were you I'd go get your dishes at least. I can't imagine how frustrated you are though. I hope a new buyer is found soon!

Anonymous said...

Hi Erika - I'm from MoGo and have been following your blog for a while now. :) Just wanted to say I'm sorry! We went through the same thing when we were selling our place in Florida - only they backed out a couple days AFTER we had moved all our stuff out and up to Chicago. We didn't even get to keep the money either.

It was so disappointing and I threw a nice little temper tantrum over it and felt a bit better afterwards. You just never know though, the right buyer could be just around the corner and at this time next week you could even have a new contract. Fingers crossed for you!

Faith

LaceFace said...

Sucks about the house, but what a fun time you had with your baby! She sounds like a hoot!