No Countrywide For Old Men

Remember the house we made an offer on? Think back. I know it's hard, but you can do it. Think way back. Past April. Past March. Think February.

We finally heard back.

They flat-out rejected our offer. In fact, it's like they never received it as they countered with the asking price.

It's been a while (nearly 80 days) and the details may have been lost in the haze of time, so here's a little refresher:
The Wife™ found this cute little cape cod style home in one of the better areas of Ypsilanti. The price seemed a little high for what it was and the taxes were quite outrageous, but there was something about it. We scheduled a time to see it, and were reasonably surprised by what we saw. Granted, the interior needed repainting, the upstairs would need to be dry-walled, and there were moisture issues with the basement, but those were all correctable. The taxes - as we found out through fighting drunken-monkey style with the Ypsi assessor's office - were not correctable. A couple weeks went by, and no other house that we viewed had the charm or potential of this one. After carefully weighing our finances and calculating - to the penny, I might add - what we could afford we submitted an offer, with the stipulation that we would close before the taxes went out of homestead status. Mind you, this home had been vacant for two years before we submitted our offer, and had been on the market for nearly a year without a single nibble.

The deadline came and went with no word from the bank. It was around this time that we discovered there were two mortgages on the house, and an appraisal that everyone thought had been done actually hadn't. With no appraisal and higher taxes looming, we submitted a revised offer that - we hoped - would still be accepted. More waiting.

About a week ago we received word that the appraisal had been done, and we'd receive an answer shortly. As it turns out, one bank had already signed off on the offer; the second was apparently waiting on the appraisal.

The second bank? Countrywide.

Had I known; had I an inkling that we were dealing with these bureaucratic mush-brained lint-sucking window-lickers, I would've pulled the offer immediately. During the housing boom, Countrywide was one of the largest mortgage lenders in the country. In most cases, they managed to qualify people for much more than they could afford by "tweaking" their financial information and/or flat out lying (or, as Enron called it, "creative accounting"). Now, they're struggling to keep their heads above water as the housing bubble bursts. Supposedly they were being bought out by Bank of America, but that appears to be another rumour in the long list of scuttlebutt floating through the detritus. Judging from our experience and the experience of others that I've talked to, Countrywide is scrapping for every last penny - even if it means hanging onto vacant properties that are costing them upwards of $6,000 a year.

Right now we're right back where we were when we started. Offer - revised - is in their court, however, we have a bit of an upper hand this time round. Should we not hear back from them within an acceptable length of time (i.e. two weeks, maximum) we pull the offer. If they try to counter us, we pull the offer. Basically, if they don't accept the offer that's currently on the table we're walking away and searching for more amicable abodes elsewhere.

Shopping for a home should not be this stressful.