It’s all about a millimeter away from being official: we’re getting a house. In the picture to the right, Melissa and I are standing on the foundation of our future home (in the garage, specifically). The process, however, didn’t go quite as smoothly as we hoped.
When we put a contract down almost a month ago, we wanted the builder—a large, nationwide, publicly traded builder—to commit to completion as-scheduled before the end of November. This is very important; the $8,000 first-time home-buyer tax credit only applies to homes that close before November 30, 2009.
Well, when we submitted our contract, we wrote in a clause to the effect of ‘will close before Nov. 30’. Apparently the builder’s lawyers didn’t much like this, and our contract caused quite a firestorm in the upper echelons of the builder’s corporate structure because of our innocent little write-in clause. Some high-ranking decision-makers wanted the clause to stand, the lawyers and some other high-ranking decision-makers disagreed.
The final decision from the top, after much strife, is that the clause is unacceptable, and the builder will not approve the contract with that clause in it. Darned lawyers! The builder has, however, made a number of informal assurances that they will have everything ‘signed and sealed’ before the end of November. The end-of-November date coincides with the end of their fiscal year, and the end of fiscal year numbers (which are based on closed deals) determine employee bonuses, stockholder happiness, etc.—so they really want to see it done before then, even if they can’t put it in writing.
Our options were, basically, to either trust them or walk away . . . so we’re going to trust them and pray it works out as expected and we don’t lose the $8,000. Our financing was approved a couple weeks ago, and the revised contract was submitted today. This time it should be approved promptly (since the one clause was the only thing holding it up last time), and then it will all be completely, totally official.