Whimsical September

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Buying our Home in Kansas: Inspection Follow-up & Loan Finalizing

After signing a stack of loan paperwork for 30 minutes straight last night, I figure that today is as good a day as any to do a little home-buying update! We’re still cruisin’ for a September 2nd closing date, so hopefully six weeks from today we’ll be welcoming our moving truck (fingers crossed!) and moving in.

In the last update I talked about the list of things Jamie and I were going to request that the sellers fix per the inspection report. Last Tuesday, after a few phone calls back and forth, we settled with the following outcome.

1.) We requested that the two AC parts that needed replacing be replaced professionally with receipt. They agreed.
2.) We requested that the two loose side boards be nailed down, but our realtor forgot to ask for that. Once I caught her error, she immediately agreed to have it done professionally.
3.) We requested that the hairline crack in the kitchen countertop be professionally sealed with receipt, but the countertop type and correct seal were discontinued years ago. We debated asking for a countertop allowance but decided against it. If a few thousand dollars falls out of the sky at some point, we’re like to replace the countertops with granite to increase home value. Kitchens and bathrooms typically sell homes, so we’re glad there’s some room for updates.
4.) We requested that any tree limbs touching the house be trimmed. They agreed.
5.) Finally, we requested that a boot on the roof that needed replacing be replaced. The sellers came back and said that they wouldn’t fix it “because they never had a problem with the roof (which is new-ish) and didn’t know what the boot was”. We wanted it fixed. To be honest, we didn’t know what said boot was either, but the inspection report came back showing that it needed fixing, so we wanted it fixed. No questions asked. Our realtor asked us if the boot would be a deal breaker if the sellers didn’t agree to fix it, and I just told her that we’d cross that bridge if we needed to. It obviously wouldn’t have been a deal breaker, but any problems that showed up on the inspection would show up on the inspection when we sell the house in a few years, and by that point we’re going to have our own issues to fix. Thankfully, they agreed to fix it.

Now that the inspection process is complete, we’re moving onto securing the loan. As soon as we started looking for a home, we applied for and were pre-approved for a loan. After we did some interest rate shopping, we decided to use a local bank and requested the necessary paperwork to get the ball rolling. We signed what we needed to, gathered a checklist of necessary paperwork (W2s, drivers license copies, etc.), and shipped it all back to the bank in Kansas. Once our mortgage lender received our packet, she shipped us the next set of paperwork that I mentioned above that detailed our monthly payments, discussed closing figures, etc. We’ll ship that back to Kansas in the morning!

The next box that needs a checkmark is securing our insurance. We’re extremely loyal to USAA for all of our insurance needs, so there’s no shopping that we need to do in this department. Jamie will make that phone call in the next couple of weeks.

If you missed my previous posts regarding our home-buying process so far, you can catch up here –

Buying Vs. Renting in Kansas Debate (June 12th)
A Declined Offer (June 22nd)
Finding Our Home and Putting an Offer In (June 30th)
The First Few Steps (July 2nd)
Inspection Report (July 9th)

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