When I got up this morning I called the financing guy to get things rolling on the money front of the condo purchase and got his voice mail.
Sometime this afternoon he called back, requested my e-mail address, and sent me a list of things he would need me to fax to him and a link to his Web site where I could fill out an application.
I got to his site and couldn’t see anything indicating an online application other than a link to loan application forms in PDF format.
So I assumed he just meant that I could get the forms online and began printing out all 21 text-heavy pages of the application, dropping my ink levels way down.
I started filling it out and thought “There has to be an easier way,” so I went back to the site and there, right in front of me, was a link to an online application form.
All that ink wasted for nothing.
After I filled the form out I needed to fax the other documents to him (printing them out consumed even more ink), which was easier said than done, as I don’t have a land line, so I can’t fax anything from home.
What had once been the leasing office is now the sales office, and the one person working there is nowhere near as nice to residents as the people who worked there when this was just an apartment complex were, so I knew that I wouldn’t be able to make use of the fax machine in there.
I considered driving in to work, or even over to where Kathleen works to make use of a fax machine there, but at that time of day it would have been a major hassle to have to deal with traffic.
So I opted to walk over to the shipping/copying place across the street and fax it from there, thinking that it would cost, at most, 50 cents a page or something, though I didn’t bother asking the price before I had the papers faxed, so I was quite surprised to find out that it cost me eleven dollars to fax it all.
A dollar a page seems extremely excessive, especially for a fax sent to a local number. I would have been better off waiting until tomorrow and heading over to visit Kathleen or something.
Worse, many of the documents (though not all) I printed out and faxed could have simply been e-mailed over to the guy.
So as I was indicating at the outset of this narrative detailing the minutiae of the day’s events in reference to the current atrophied state of my cognitive abilities, Jon brain no work good.
In any case, I have actually made my application at this point and so far I haven’t heard the sound of laughter in response.
Honestly, I have to say that, on paper, or at least on-screen, things look deceptively good. The balance of assets versus liabilities looks especially good.
Of course, that’s based on things like gross income and doesn’t take into account any of my other monthly expenses. Viewed in those terms, things would look considerably less rosy.
Still, it did look pretty good, and buoyed my hopes about getting a loan ever so slightly.
Honestly, I really don’t see how banks are really risking anything by giving anyone a loan in this market. I mean, sure the foreclosure process can take a while and costs money, but given how rapidly properties appreciate in value around here, by the time they got it all sorted out the property would be worth twice what the original loan amount was for and the bank will stand to make a hell of a lot more than they would have made off of interest if the borrower hadn’t defaulted.
The market is such that there’s pretty much no risk in giving anyone a loan.
Around here, a bank could give a home loan to a penniless bum who walked in off the street and still end up making a huge profit.
Yes, I know that I’m making a gross oversimplification (bear in mind that I am admitting to possibly suffering from some form of brain damage), but the point is that I’m not exactly a high-risk for a bank, and even if I were, they’d still be able to at least make their money back eventually.
Still, I’m am convinced that I’m going to get a phone call or e-mail saying something like, “What the hell were you thinking? You expected us to loan money to the likes of you? Not only are we not going to give you a loan, we’re going to sue you for wasting our time.”
I know, that’s not too likely to happen, but there is a distinct possibility that I’ll get something along the lines of “Thank you for your interest in a home loan from Company X. Unfortunately, we are not able to provide you with a loan at this time due to one or more of the following items:
- You don’t make nearly enough money to live in Northern Virginia
- Your credit history is like that of someone who spends a significant amount of time traveling by boxcar
- We just plain don’t like you
- You’re ugly
- You smell funny
Okay, the wording might not be exactly like that (it will probably say “one or more of the following derogatory items”), but that will be the message it’s conveying.
In any case, the process has at least been initiated, and I guess there’s no point in worrying about whether or not the process actually makes it all the way through to a successful completion.
Not yet, anyway.
Beyond the financial nonsense, not much happened today. I cashed in about $92 worth of change at the bank to try to free up as much in the way of financial resources as possible.
And that was pretty much it.
I’ve got some pictures started, so I guess I’ll work on those right now. If I finish any I’ll post them.
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