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So, here's a quick recap on what's been going on behind the scenes...

Last June/July I started moving in with my girlfriend in St Augustine, and shortly thereafter the lab she works at shut down. As there were no other labs nearby where she could work, we made the decision to sell her house and move back into my condo, since there are plenty of labs near my old place in Jacksonville where she could find work. She found a job right away.

My little condo is great for a single person. 2 people and 2 dogs, not so much. So after a few months of living in what feels like an overstocked warehouse, we started looking for bigger places. The third move of 2017 ought to be pretty easy-- everything is still in boxes!

While exploring in a neighborhood we liked, near her work, we spotted a realtor putting up a sign in front of a house and decided to have a look. And it was perfect. It has a nice room for my studio, garage space for my projects, and a big yard for the dogs and a garden. 

The best part is that it needs no work done to it, which is a nice change, because pretty much every other place I have owned has been a major fixer upper (and in two cases, a literal crack den) which is how I got them so cheap. I can just move in and not have to trudge through sawdust and rubble and year long renovation projects. No more cement mixers in my living room!

Applying for a mortgage turned out to be a major pain in the ass. It shouldn't have been-- we both have impeccable/near perfect credit, we don't carry much debt, we make enough money to pay for it individually, and we're putting 20% on the down payment. It should be any mortgage broker's dream situation.

The underwriter got obsessively stuck on the fact that I own a small condo in Chile (one of the aforementioned former crack dens), and no amount of detail and documentation about it would please him. I supposed they wanted proof that it wasn't costing me anything (no mortgage/debt on it) and I provided it-- It's paid for, I own it outright, and the cost of owning it is negligible (property taxes are like $138 per year there). But they kept asking for more and more stuff, and I kept conjuring up paperwork miracles from my lawyers and accountants in Chile. Literally every day something new would come up and I would have to drop everything to make phonecalls and emails until stuff came in. It's been delaying my life and work. And finally the underwriter relented. Until 2 days before closing, where they demanded that in 48 hours we pay off 2 auto loans.

It's not an impossible request to pay them off, but it's an impossible request for anyone to manage that in 48 hours. Also, standard practice for this sort of thing, if it is an issue at all, is for it to be addressed at the beginning of the application process. Not a month later and 2 days before closing. Literally, before they even start gathering paperwork, they check that your debt-to-income ratio is good, and they did that without any problems.

We've been deliberately sabotaged by this asshole underwriter. To the point where the realtor, who has been using them for 25 years, said that their relationship is over if they don't turn this around. The case is being taken up to the head underwriter for the bank now.

And so we wait... we should have already taken possession of the keys 2 days ago.