We were scheduled to go to closing today at 3:00 pm. It didn’t happen. Maybe we’ll close on Monday. Maybe global warming isn’t real. Maybe dinosaurs are a hoax.

What went wrong is this: the broker set up the loan for the wrong amount, and that’s what went through underwriting. We’re actually going to finance much less and bring more money to closing. So now it aaaalll has to go through underwriting again to establish that we have as much money as they already know we have, and to establish that we transferred funds from our own savings and mutual funds accounts to our own checking account. This is entirely, and only, about the paper trail.

It turns out that paper trails are extremely hard to establish with financial institutions, if you’re asking them to provide information outside their regular statement cycles. Right now I’ve been on the phone for 29 minutes with my own bank (most of it on hold), as they figure out how (or perhaps how not) to issue an interim statement for my savings account, from which funds were transferred into my checking account. Had the correct loan amount been put through underwriting, I would have known of these issues days ago and been able (perhaps) to resolve them. But now? Who knows if I’ll be able to get what I need out of these institutions STAT.

I’m so angry about the situation that I’ve lost all sense of humor about it.

We got the draft settlement papers two hours before closing was scheduled, which is in itself a significant issue. I’m not even sure that’s legal. I spotted the problem with the loan amount immediately. But it was too late to do anything about it. Maybe they thought we’d just go for it and finance a bunch more than we intended to?? But Anthony and I are onto the mortgage business. These guys always screw something up.

The first house we bought, the mortgage company sent construction loan closing documents to the title company. Fail.

Once when we refinanced our mortgage on a home, the closing agent showed up with papers that contained the wrong terms on a loan — 15 years instead of 10, which would of course generate more income for the investors on the lending end. We were planning to curtail this particular loan (pay it off early) anyway, so we said screw it and went ahead and signed.

Once when we refinanced our mortgage on a different home, the bank screwed up with the loan amount. We found out at closing. It would have taken so long to fix the mistake that we would have lost our interest rate lock. So we shook our heads, plugged our noses, and signed for the loan. The loan amount was too much, of course (because when does a mortgage broker ever make a mistake that’s to the borrower’s benefit??), so we had to take cash home with us. I know, I know, it’s a crazy problem to have. But seriously, I didn’t want to take cash home and then pay interest on it for 30 years! Even if it was “only” a few thousand dollars…

And here we go again. Only this time we’re on a clock, because we have contractors lined up and we’re packing shit up in our house and setting up an alternative kitchen because ours is supposed to be ripped out and so on and so on.

Carla is way, way, way past grumpy. I have moved on to just plain grim. I hate the mortgage business.

Still on hold with my bank, by the way. The call has lasted 44 minutes so far. Still waiting for the light at the end of the tunnel.