Housing Hell

So you guys won't believe what we just went through. We left Ithaca to drive to Durham early on Tuesday evening. The drive kinda sucked, but we got to Durham in mostly one piece about an hour before our closing. When we met the agent to do the walk-through, it turns out there were a few issues....

The worst of it was that the house was purchased and rehabbed in the 90s as part of a redevelopment effort spearheaded by the city and by Self Help Credit Union. As a means of keeping the house affordable, deed restrictions were placed on the property and weren't supposed to expire until 2013: the home needs to be owner-occupied, purchased by someone whose income is less than 80% of the area median, and must be sold within a pricing structure established by the city.

Well, this house was foreclosed on in 2003 by Self Help, and they thought the foreclosure cancelled the restrictions, so they didn't disclose any of this to us. It was our attorney who discovered these restrictions during the title search. And even if we had wanted to live with them, the sale may not be kosher as our income was over 80% when we went under contract (but isn't now as I left my job a week ago), and Self Help had no idea if the sale price was within the city's pricing structure.

So we were supposed to close on Wednesday, but instead got stuck at the Red Roof, waiting for everything to work out. Our lawyer, plus the two realtors, Self Help, and some folks at the city were all busting butt to get the legalese in order and get all of those restrictions canceled.

We spent three nights at the Red Roof, which at least Self Help is going to pay for. The woman who was doing the closing was pushed out of the deal and her supervisor ended up dealing with it. Penske gets props for giving us a free additional day of truck rental.

We heard all the paperwork went through and unloaded the truck late Friday afternoon and spent the last two days getting settled.

What a mess! But my attorney certainly earned his $500. (there was also an issue with the last 10' that was supposed to be our property but now isn't and whatever; that was resolved fairly easily and paled in comparison to the rest of it.)

May you all have saner moving experiences than I did.