Episode IV: A New Home

The great Suburban Exile of 2010 has ended.  After a month of living off in the 'burbs and commuting into the city, we're finally settled in our apartment.  That we own.  But it wasn't easy getting there, naturally.

Once June had hit and we were living in Connecticut, we had a new deadline to worry over.  June 30th was the last day we could close to claim the several-thousand-dollar First Time Home-buyer Tax Credit that the government began early last year as part of the larger economic stimulus.  We had the usual runaround, hearing "of course we'll make it," and, "don't worry about it."  But that's what we heard in March.  And April.  And May.

While our bank had pulled its approval of the building, another bank had gone ahead and approved it.  That bank closed several apartments in the building and our future neighbors started moving in.  We abandoned our bank, and started from scratch with this other bank that had approved people.  The new bank was wonderful; they accomplished in a week what the first bank to two months to do.  They rushed everything through for us, and all was moving quickly.

But not quickly enough.  June was flying by, and we were getting closer and closer to losing the tax credit.  Delay after delay we could handle, albeit grudgingly, but losing the credit would have been an extra slap.  Finally, as the end of June neared, our lawyer, the bank's lawyer, and the building developer's lawyer set a date to close and hoped that we'd have the final green light from the bank by then.  That date was June 30th, 10am.

Around 10pm on June 29th, we got a call from our lawyer.  We're going to close!  Probably.  There was some confirmation of funds transfer from the bank that we needed, and that hadn't come in yet.  Our lawyer told us to be ready at 10am, but not to show up at the closing table until he called.  Just in case.

The next morning we had our final walk-through in the apartment before the closing.  We walked around looking everything over one last time.  But mostly we were just wondering, would this really happen?  10am came and went.  10:30am came and went.  Finally, the phone rang, and we were off to the closing table.  Two hours, and many signatures and people shuffling, later we were homeowners.

Wasting no time, we immediately scheduled the movers for the following Monday and painted over the weekend.  It's good to be home.