Hey there HIB readers! Well, between work, trying to get the house situation locked down and chasing Aurora around I haven’t had much time for posting. Here are some updates, for those of you who are interested.

As of Tuesday last week, we are officially in contract. Yay! The documentation showed up at my lawyer’s office after much chasing around, tears, threats, wailing, gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. This was only three weeks after all the details are particulars were worked out and agreed to by all parties. Good job there by the seller’s attorney who managed to drag his feet, dodge my attorney’s phone calls and e-mails and not deliver on things he promised.

FYI, between the taxes, maintenance and upkeep on the house as well as the opportunity cost of the money from the sale, the seller is losing over $50 for every day delayed. The sellers attorney has so far cost his client over a $1000. Well done.

Right now, we’re in contract and have an approved mortgage. I sent the last of the last paperwork to my mortgage company on Friday. The only thing we’re waiting on is the survey, then the whole kit and kaboodle gets shipped off the bank for their final blessing. Once that’s done, we can schedule the closing.

One amusing note, I got the bank appraisal late last week and as I perused it I realized that all of the comps in the appraisal report were homes that I’ve written about here on HIB. I suppose that’s to be expected, but I still thought it was funny.

Thereby hangs a tale, unfortunately. The house we’re buying is an estate sale. The seller is is out of state and apparently wants to fly in to attend the closing in person. So there’s no telling when that might be. It would have been nice if the seller’s attorney had informed us of this fact early on in the process so that we could have scheduled this well ahead of time, but that would make things too easy.

So, here we sit. It’s January 10th. My lease on the apartment we live in now is up on January 28th. If I don’t get out by that date it’s going to cost me a ton of money for an emergency one month extension, even if I only need a few days.

Monday, I will again call everyone I can to try and speed the process along, but ability to affect the outcome or time line is pretty limited. I have to hope that the seller and/or the seller’s attorney wakes up and realizes that it’s in their best interest to get this thing done as soon as possible.

Anyway, that’s enough of my troubles. I do have some actual real estate posts on my thumb drive. I’m going to try to get caught up on those sold homes posts Real Soon Now.