revjim.net

I have absolutely no idea what I'm doing any more.

Jess and I were worried sick that our house would never sell. Especially after hearing that some friends of ours with a similarly priced house in a different neighborhood have had more visits than they can count in the past month and yet Jess and I have not even had one in 2 weeks. So, we worked it all out and decided our best option would be to rent the house at a loss and that that would make much more sense than selling it at a loss. This way, we don't have to compete with the foreclosures and, potentially, will lose less money.

We no more than decide that one day when our lawyer in New York has some bad news the next (i.e. today). It seems that the seller's lawyer is being slow. Hence the reason it's taken so long to even get this information. However, now that we have it it seems that there is an uncleared lien on the property that is over 10 years old. It is from the owner of the house before the current owner. Logic would indicate that the current owner couldn't buy it without that lien being cleared, so, more than likely, there really isn't a lien on the house. But, in order to find out, Chase bank, the holder of the lien, has to dig through their records to find out. To make matters worse, our Lawyer's assistant has indicated that working with Chase on this type of thing is generally very slow. Further more, since these records are over 10 years old, they may potentially be paper records in a box that someone has to track down.

So, this could take weeks — maybe months. So, Jess and I have a few options.

1. Sit around and wait with our thumbs up our asses until someone tells us the house is ready to close on. This could be 2 weeks, 2 months, or 2 years.
2. Wait until the proposed closing date of 10/1 and then submit a "Time is of the Essence" statement and wait out the 2-weeks required there and then start the house hunt all over again if we haven't closed by then.
3. Withdraw our offer, eat the earnest money, and start looking for another house now.
4. Just say "Fuck It" and stay in Texas.

Also of note is that, any of the "look for a house" options actually entail moving to an apartment in New York and then looking for a house from that apartment while keeping our belongings in storage. There's really no other way to manage it at this point.

As Joel suggested on Sunday, everything is best decided by a good old fashion Internet poll. And I think I agree. But I'm too damn lazy to figure out how to do a poll that will span the 5 or 6 different outlets this information might show up on, so we'll do this the old fashioned way: just comment with your choice. Choose any of the above options or feel free to submit one of your own. Feel free to elaborate on your choice or let it stand alone. Bribes and suggestive banter will earn your vote extra weight in the final tally.

Game on!