Test Post 3

From The Guilded Cage.

This just blows my mind!

Buyers denied loan, but still lose deposit

First, why would anyone put that much cash at risk as earnest money for a P&S agreement?  That is insane!  I usually only give a check for $500 with any offer I write. There’s really no reason to give more.  A contract can be made legally binding with as little as $1.  That's right, one dollar.  But this couple for some reason put down thirty-one thousand dollars!  Why?

I would love to know what realtor they were working with.  Then I’d make certain that realtor was NEVER involved with any of my transactions!  It is morally repugnant to even consider putting anyone in that kind of position.

And the whole thing would have been easily avoided with just a slight tweak to the wording of the contract.  The standard forms generally have a financing contingency clause.  But, as we can see in this case, it is not really strong enough if the sellers side want to be pricks about it.  Typically the clause will read something like this.

If Buyer cannot obtain financing within 30 days Buyer must notify Seller (in writing within 30 days of the date of this contract) of his election to cancel this contract. Failure to give notice of cancellation within such time period constitutes waiver of this financing contingency.

In the case of this couple they could have obtained financing if they had listed their current house for sale.  Since they were unwilling to do so the bank refused to give them the loan.  And the court decided that was a reasonable requirement and is letting the seller keep the deposit.  This could have been avoided by adding four powerful words to the clause:

If Buyer cannot obtain financing SUITABLE TO THE BUYER within 30 days Buyer must notify Seller (in writing within 30 days of the date of this contract) of his election to cancel this contract. Failure to give notice of cancellation within such time period constitutes waiver of this financing contingency.

That way, if the buyer does not want to sell their house and the bank is demanding it – that offer of a loan is “not suitable to the buyer” and the contingency remains in force.

If you just deal with the listing agent yourself, you need to understand that they have a fiduciary responsibility TO THE SELLER.  They are not your agent, they don’t work for you.  If you are not a real estate pro – work with one!  A buyer’s agent could have steered them away from this disaster.

FYI:

I'm doing most of my blogging at the moment over at:

The (new) Eclectic Dragonfly.

Just thought you might like to know...

NEVER FORGET

Photo by Sister72

Who in their right mind would think this is a good idea?

CNN is reporting that the President’s jobs plan may create as many as 1 million jobs.  They go on to add that ‘economists gave generally positive reviews’ to the President’s plan.

Um, FYI, the President gave a speech.  He hasn’t actually given us the plan.  The actual plan hasn’t even been written yet!

OK.  Now let’s look at the numbers.

1,000,000 Jobs created

$447,000,000,000.00 Estimated cost of Obama’s “plan”
    (that $447 billion dollars!)

That’s $447,000.00 per job!

If you take that cost for each job and broke it down for one year’s paycheck for one person that’s:

$447,000.00 cost per job

divided by 52 weeks in a year

divided by 40 hours in a week

That pay rate would be $214.90 an hour!

Unless it’s the economist that’s getting paid that call it $215 an hour, how can they possibly consider this a good investment?  The President doesn’t care.  He’s spending our money on this lame brained idea, not his own!  And he’ll be out of office before the bill comes due.

Should Congress pass a cockamamie scheme like this?  With those numbers?  Where the ROI is only a million jobs?  And probably the vast majority of them will be bureaucrats overseeing the new Centralized Federal Workers Administration?  Lord help us! 

Well, I suppose the - still to be proposed - Federal Works Planning Kommittee vill need verkers…

“Und if you don’t like verre ve assigned you to verk you vill be reassigned instead to a kamp to be reeducated!”

America was nice while it lasted.

Please take a number…

Two weeks ago I made an appointment to meet with someone from the mortgage department at my bank.  That appointment was this morning. 

I got all dressed up.  Trousers and polo by Botany 500, my best going to the office shoes, watch by Michelle* on a tooled leather strap made by yours truly.  I don’t get that spiffed up on the weekend for just anybody…

[* It’s very real but I got it for next to nothing at the flea market.  It’s so nice when the venders don’t know what they have! ;-) ]

I arrived about ten minutes early and fully prepared.  I had my pay stubs.  I had my bank statements.  I had two years worth of tax returns. I had documentation regarding my pension and 401(k).  All laid out nice and neat in a ring binder.

I also had five (5) copies of my personal Income Statement and Balance Sheet.  The first one shows things as they stand today (admittedly not very pretty…), the next three show the three steps I’ve laid out that will solve my cashflow problems once and for all, and the final result – a wonderfully clean and productive Income Statement and Balance Sheet that, once I achieve it, will give me the freedom to invest as I see fit for my future.

She didn’t look and any of it.

She just fired up the banks web-based mortgage application form and filled it in for me as if I didn’t know how to type.  I could have done that myself two weeks ago at home on my own computer in my skivvies had I chosen to do so.  The “person from the mortgage department” we were meeting with turned out to be nothing more than an order taker!

(muffled by the speaker)

“Would you like fries with that? – Please drive up…”

This was a total waste of time!  Both my time in the meeting this morning and of the two weeks we waited for this morning to arrive!  I need to talk one-on-one with a real decision maker, not waste my time with low level data entry clerks!  How do I get past these underlings and reach the real mortgage people?  I may not be independently wealthy now – but very soon after I get to that fifth spreadsheet I expect to be someone my bankers will know on a first name basis!

I’m sooo confused!

So, if then candidate Obama had as he stated been to fifty-seven states and he had at the time one left to go to, but they wouldn’t let him go to Alaska or Hawaii – how does North Dakota not qualifying to be a state mess up the math?

For extra credit factor in the fact that two ‘states’ are actually not states but commonwealths…

Now that it’s come to light that North Dakota is not now nor has it never been a state, what happens to all that federal money that has been spent there low these many years?  And what about all the federal taxes paid by North Dakotans over those same many years?

Oh what a tangled web we weave…

I suspect the .gov of the territory will try to quietly “fix the problem” and sweep it under the rug.  All the while hopping that nobody notices.

H/T to SayUncle for bringing this to our attention.  Go forth and read the comments.  Many a good point are made there in.