Closing

As closing neared, we tried to get everything in order -- without jinxing the closing.  So, we continued to pack, but did not notify anyone of our new address -- just in case we did not close.  

On the top of our list of things to do was to begin the draining of our bank account and get a cashier's check. for the Title Company.  This payment equaled the amount of our sales price and fees charged by the mortgage and title company and prepayments for taxes and our first month's mortgages less the mortgage amount and money we had already put into escrow and the amount the seller had agreed to contribute to closing.  A number that I would think would be easy to calculate once all the moving parts have been nailed down.  I was wrong.  We did not receive this number until 11:30 a.m. before our 4:00 p.m. closing. 

 After we received the final payment amount, we headed over to the house to go through a final walk through of our house.  At this meeting we went back through the house with the builder to check and see if all the things we had marked as needing attention had been fixed.  Almost everything had been fixed with the exception of a little bit of painting and rolling the grass, which will be done after the yard dries out a little bit (it's still wet from all the rain we had the week of closing).

Then it was off to the bank and back to work for a couple of hours before closing.  Since closing was taking place up north at such a late hour on a Friday afternoon, we headed that direction extremely early.  Once at the title company, we sat around a long time -- the title company was running late.  Eventually, we were permitted to subject ourselves to 30 years of servitude in exchange for some keys!