Still No House (So, Naturally, Ranting)
Yeah, still no house, because our underwriter decided to start getting their act together around 11:15, and then went on lunch. So I called our loan officer hourly, trying to get status updates, but neither he nor us were successful in finding her or getting her to return messages.
She started off the day by telling our broker at 10:20, "Oh, yeah, I need Verification of Employment for heptadecagram, too." So I tried to cajole my generally unresponsive HR department into calling this underwriter (Ha! Like she'd answer her phone!) and getting the handoff. I called up all six people in my HR department, on up the scale to the CPO (Chief Personnel). And not a single one answered the phone. About an hour later, one of them called back: "Oh, yeah, that underwriter called here at 9:00 and got the information she needed." Blaaaarg!
red_lynx had the rougher time. Her HR is very responsive, and was trying to figure out why this underwriter said "I'll fax it in 15 minutes", at 11:15, and then was unreachable for two and a half hours, with no sign of the fax.
It turned out that part of this verification involves getting the fax number, contacting some third-party fax-number looker-upper, and confirming that that number belongs to that business. Which is understandable to do. But not cool to do it a day after the supposed closing, get it wrong the first time (JHU Applied Physics Lab, not JHU), and for each verification to take 90 minutes.
Once she finally got the VoE for red_lynx at 2:30, all that was left for her was "closing the loan" (not us "closing the purchase", mind). When I called our loan officer at the close of day (5:10) to confirm that the settlement wasn't happening until Monday at this pace, he said the last thing he heard was "she was looking at it as of 3:30". Dammit.
This means we're out the day of work, cost of daycare (and daycare food), cost of modified delivery (and possible storage) for the flooring, 4 days of renovations, and a lot of sanity. Neither red_lynx nor I are dealing well with this, as we are very irritable and snappy. Both of us being not physically well doesn't help, especially when I went and made myself sick by eating a lot of cookie dough.
This loan was through Bank of America. That is where we currently keep our bank accounts, and have for 10 years. I told our loan officer that if our house wasn't settled today, we would look at taking our accounts elsewhere, and would refinance down the road with another lender. APL has a credit union, so maybe I can talk red_lynx into that.