I've been sitting on this post for a while. For a couple of reasons:
- I wanted to make sure we got our approval. I didn't want to jinx anything, or give us bad luck by saying what I am going to say, and not officially have our mortgage approved yet
- I have a lot to say, and I needed to make sure that I wrote it all out and don't go completely crazy, because let's face it: this process has made me crazy.
And I'm going to tell you-- this whole process has just made me feel vulnerable, like I'm not a good person, like I am stupid for trying to get my own home.... it's been horrible for the most part. And let me tell you why.
So, let's go back... alllll the way back to December 30, 2015.
This was our initial meeting with NVR. We had done the whole pre-approval thing before we even moved forward with THINKING we could get a brand-spanking new house. And we were quickly approved for WAY more than we would ever want to spend. Yay.
On
December 30, we met with a rep of NVR mortgage to go over our information. A different person from NVR had sent over a list of stuff that we should bring to the meeting with us...
- 2 years of employment history
- dependent information
- bank statements
- tax information from the past 2 years
- 2 most recent paychecks
I know there was more, but I can't find the email or paper list that they had given us.
Anyways.
We meet with the loan officer, Steve {this is now the THIRD person from NVR that we have dealt with since we decided to build our own home. Within one month.} to go over our loan application.
It seemed very cut and dry. We need to work on our credit. A credit specialist will be in contact with us probably right after the holiday to tell us what would be best with tackling this. Besides that, we MAY need to give more documentation before everything goes to underwriting, but it should be pretty easy. {As of March 4th, 2016-- still no call from a "credit specialist".}
I'm feeling pretty okay at this point. This should be easy. And, I honestly HATE anything that has to do with money. It does nothing but stress me out and it's unnecessary stress, but it still gets to me.
January 18th. We are asked by our loan officer to fill out a budget letter. It's basically a work sheet and we need to show the mortgage company WHERE we are getting the money for our 3.5% down payment, as well as additional costs for closing.
Well, we did something that apparently we probably should not have done. We got a loan for some money to help us out with the down payment. Essentially, we wanna do this NOW. To do it now, we need more money than we can generate on our own in a short 6-ish months. So, we contacted our bank and talked about a loan. No problem they say. We are outstanding members at our bank, and people do this "all the time" for down payments on a home.
We were told by NVR and our loan officer, Steve, that this MIGHT be a problem, but we should be able to handle it and make it not a problem. The problem being that we can't technically take money out for a loan for a down payment. Loop hole was that we had gotten the loan before we signed anything for building a home of our own. But what if we can't use it?!
Now I start to freak out a little bit. We had money for our down payment, and we were being told that we might not be able to use it as our down payment. Time to start freaking out and panicking.
If we can't use this money towards our down payment, what in the hell are we going to do?! We've done EVERYTHING for this house so far. All of our appointments are taken care of, everything is picked out for our home, and we are just dreaming of the day we get the keys and it becomes our own. We even take dates to Home Depot and Lowes and pick out colors and accessories for each room. It all seemed so easy and now you're giving me this. Crap.
Heart-to-heart talks were had between hubby and me. Tears were shed {by me}. This is what we want. Sure, we could wait, but there's no reason why we can't do this now. Why one person tells us that the money we have will be okay and the next person says no way?? That sucks. But, we are gonna figure it out so that THIS home is ours. Even if we have to eat Ramen for the next six months to save every penny we make. So be it.
The solution: We had to have that down payment money "gifted" to us. Against my pride. And believe me-- I am a stubborn and proud person that HATES asking for any kind of help.
Thankfully we had someone who was willing and able to "gift" us what we needed to avoid all this baloney that NVR was giving us about the down payment we already had. Whew.
January 28th. We now have a new NVR person we are working with. Rebecca. She's a SENIOR loan processor. She was going to be helping us get all of the paperwork we needed in order to get the loan into underwriting. She sent us an email with a list of what we needed.
Let me also say that her communication is below sub-par. She originally emailed us to say "hello" and to set up a time to chat about what we need to do to get our loan to underwriting. Well, I had Jason taking care of this part. He understands it all way more than I do. So, he set up a time to chat with Rebecca about everything we needed. This was scheduled for like, 2 in the afternoon one day. During the week. While at work. Jason took time out of his work day to go and have this conversation with her. Well, she never called him. He tried calling her and no answer.
In short, she pretty much had to reschedule another time to talk with him because a meeting ran over or some nonsense like that. Very irritating, and very unprofessional in my opinion. Shoot him an email from your meeting, or call as soon as your meeting is over. Don't wait for us to be hounding you so that we can talk.
Anyways, they did finally get that phone call taken care of, and afterwards she emailed over a list of things we needed to send over to get our loan into underwriting.
Let me give you this list:
- Gift Letter explaining where our "gift" money was coming from.
- Dates of MY employment for the past 2 years {remember: we gave this to them WAY back at our application meeting}
- "Brief" letter explaining derogatory credit on credit report {this becomes comical by the middle of February}
- Budget letter needs to state more than what we gave them {what?}
- Short sale information- because the credit report with the settlement date listed there isn't good enough
- Bank Statements for December and January {already gave them current bank statements}
- 401K Statements
- W2's for 2015 {the past 2 weren't good enough? I get that the newest ones will be better, but geez.}
- last paystub of 2015 for me {because the three I gave your previously aren't good enough? Really?!}
Half of this stuff was frustrating because we have already given it. How does Nov/Dec paychecks differ from Dec/Jan? I really don't know.
And by this time, we had conflicting things going on, with one loan person telling us we needed this, this and this, and the other loan person telling us we needed twelve different things.
We submitted everything to Rebecca, our SENIOR loan processor on
February 5th.
I had everything organized, with a cover letter, and IN ORDER from the email that Rebecca had sent us. I wanted no excuses or questions as to what something was, or any other kind of nonsense they might try to feed us.
On
February 8th we find out that they need to verify Jason's employment at his current job.
Say WHAT?!?!?
Yes. Something they should have done how long ago?!?! Apparently they had GOOGLED the number for his company and it was a dead end. So, he had to get in contact with them and get them to fill out paperwork for them. This took two days.
Which means that our files weren't submitted to underwriting until
February 10th!!! But hey, at least they're finally in underwriting, right?
Fast-forward to
February 19th-- It has been TWO WEEKS since we gave the information to NVR for underwriting.. TWO WEEKS. Yeah, I know only one week that it's been in underwriting, but still.
Jason emailed them to find out what the situation was. Our loan processor, Rebecca, emailed back quickly saying that she was looking through information from the underwriter and would get back to him shortly.
Here's the great part. Rebecca has been OUT because she broke her foot. Now, we have emailed a couple of times regarding a few things, and have gotten no response. So naturally, the feeling of being ignored sets in. And then frustration. Why weren't they getting back to us?
And then we find out that she broke her foot. A simple auto-reply email stating you were out of the office would have been SO GREAT and a much more professional approach then just not having anything set up and making your clients feel neglected. Again. So unprofessional.
So, like I said. Jason had emailed her that morning. She emailed back that she was going through the underwriter's notes and she would call.
Wouldn't you know it...... They have MORE documentation that they need.
MORE.
This time, they wanted:
- Short Sale LETTER explaining why I had a short sale
- Bankruptcy LETTER explaining a bankruptcy for Jason from years ago.
- EXACT employment dates for my time at one job several years ago. Again, in a LETTER form, and also explaining why I left that job. {apparently the resume with my months of employment listed on it wasn't good enough}
- ANOTHER letter, this time explaining a gap in employment {when hubby lost his job due to downsizing}
And remember that money that I mentioned we had for a down payment?? It might not even be OK to have that at all at this point and we might have to "get rid of it" before we close {read: we have to pay off the loan before we close. No problem because we were gifted that money at this point, but our loan is going to be used for moving expenses and buying essentials for when we get in the house-- like a fridge and a fence for our dogs}.
Tears are shed. Again. Lots of them. This is beyond ridiculous. We make way more than enough money for this house. We have things in the "past"-- but let's face it. That's all the past, and we have made ourselves way better since then and have learned from mistakes.
This is way too much stress. Way too much. I know I am about at a breaking point by now. Jason told them that our loan was a deal breaker. If we can't keep it, we can't sign for a mortgage with NVR. We had plans to do things with that money after we closed, and why is this such a big deal anyways?! We replaced the money with gift money, it has been sourced and accounted for and we should have NO PROBLEMS as of this point.
February 22-- Jason finally gets a call! Our loan processor, Rebecca, had to talk to her boss's boss, but we can keep our loan money! Thank goodness. We have to put it into a separate bank account so it doesn't "mix" with our Ryan Homes monies {down payments, closing costs, etc}. So yay to that. And we were told that we should hear the final decision from the underwriter by the end of the next day.
February 25- Jason emailed to find out what was going on. Sent the email to the loan processor, Rebecca, as well as our loan officer, Steve. We figured emailing both of them was best just in case Rebecca was out because of her broken leg, or something along those lines.
Well, Rebecca emailed back nearly immediately telling us that there was no news yet. She was waiting for a response and will let us know as soon as she has word. She also apologized, saying she realized this was a stressful time.
Not long after that, Steve called. He relayed the same information that Rebecca had. He mentioned that they were both "watching it like a hawk" so that they could let us know as soon as they knew.
Fast-forward a few hours later. Rebecca now calls. She went through our stuff, just to see if she could be proactive in bringing anything up that the underwriters might still want {WHAT?!}. The "only" thing she could find was that they might want to have a copy of my divorce decree showing that I don't owe any alimony or anything fun like that.
Ugh. More.Fricken.Papers.
So, it's been twenty days by this point. And we still don't have an approval {or denial, or whatever you might want to call being turned down}.
February 29- We get an email from our SALES REP, Shelli, telling us that she just got the word that our loan was APPROVED!!! And this email came through after 8 pm at night!!
March 1- Around 2pm, Jason FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY gets the call from the loan processor, Rebecca. So much for watching the progress of our loan "like a hawk" if it takes nearly a half business day to get back to us {and this is only irritating because we heard the night before that we had finally gotten our approval}.
We have contingencies, little ones that we have nearly taken care of at this point... and paperwork. MORE paperwork, but nothing bogus that they don't already have.
HUGE sighs of relief have been had. It feels so incredibly different now to FINALLY have our approval.
Like, now-- this house really CAN be ours. It feels different than going through all of these motions to "potentially" have our house being built for us.
End point: I am not happy with NVR. To go through all of this, and have it all be considered a "seamless" process, and to have it be easier for paperwork and blah blah because they are sister company-- load of baloney. And, we still have months to deal with them til our home is complete and we close.
I can make excuses if I want to about them to make myself feel better-- but honestly? I fell like the majority of this could have been handled a lot better and more professional than what it was.
I will say that I know their underwriters have been really busy in our area with lots of new home loans and such, but still-- we are just as important as that next stack of papers on your desk and I don't feel like we were treated that way.
I fully anticipate more headaches and more stress. But, that approval makes it all worth it, right?
And, a quick update before I do post: It's March 4 now..... we faxed AND emailed our approval letter earlier in the day. No response to it yet. It would be great to have confirmation from ONE of the two people we sent the email to that they received the fax we sent..... or even the attachment to the email we also sent.
Le sigh.
It's worth it, right?
And, if you made it to the end of this one, props to you. Go have a beer or something. This was a damn long post, haha!
