They say that good things come to those who wait. Well, I have been waiting. Now that things are so close though, the
waiting is fast becoming unbearable.
This whole process began on January 4, 2015 with the death of my
Dad. That was when I had a 30-day deadline
to obtain a mortgage so that I could fulfil my end of the bargain and retain
the house. I really thought I was going
to have major trouble qualifying for a mortgage being retired and on a pension. It actually happened pretty quickly and I was
the proud owner of my childhood home.
Unfortunately, as the months passed, the crushing debt was
weighing me right into the ground. The
stress of that debt was playing on my health.
Add in the stress of dealing with my Dad’s estate and processing his
loss. Combine all of that with a
significant back injury, a fractured wrist, previous knee surgery and my body
was taking a physical and psychological beating.
After a summer of debating how I could best relieve the debt
and what would be my best course of action.
I made the difficult and yes, painful decision to sell. That occurred very quickly after I made the
decision and called my friend Neil Thompson.
Within 2 weeks, the house was sold.
More accurately 10 days and that is only because the strategy was to
leave the house on the market for a week, do the open house on the weekend and
then accept offers on the Tuesday evening.
Once the sale of the house was put in motion, then I had to
find a place to live. After extensive
searching online and picking out several possible locations, the physical
search began. I was quite open to living
anywhere. Renee was really wanting White
Rock. We looked at a place in Surrey
which was very nice and looked like it would end up being “the place”. It was a bit of a difficult commute for Renee
though, plus it was missing several things on my want list.
We looked at a place in White Rock and were shocked. The location was right on the King George
Highway and noisy as heck. It had
literally nothing on my list and it was tiny.
The Master Bedroom was tiny and a queen size bed would have been
crowded. It was listed as a three-bedroom
home. By comparison to what I bought, the
spare bedrooms there were about the size of my new walk-in closet. Not to mention expensive and would put me in
the position of another mortgage.
A couple of other places were looked at and rejected
outright and then we walked into “The Place”.
It had everything, was within my budget and it’s a nice commute for
Renee on the Westcoast Express. The stumbling
block here was the wait for closing on my house. The days dragged by until October 30 and I
received my money, which promptly disappeared.
Easy come, easy go.
Now the wait really began.
The down payment was put on my new home, which was under construction and
just in the framing stage. The projected
finishing date was Feb 15, 2016 but allowing for delays Feb 29, 2016 was more
likely. Any further delays could push it
back to March 15, 2016, but not likely further than that.
Finally, I got my notice that my final inspection would be
Feb 17, 2016, so we are already two days behind the original projected date,
but I figured things would progress quickly from there. The days began to drag by, with the
anticipation of the move building. There
was no word forthcoming about what was happening. I suspected it may be a problem with Occupancy
Permits.
On February 25, 2016 I got an email from my lawyer which
instantly caused the excitement to build, until I read it and from a building
high came a crashing low. Sure enough
there was a problem with either City Hall or the Land Titles Office and
certificates have not been issued and so the ten-day notice to close would not
be issued either. The one statement that
stood out and which really hit home was “the completion date for this
transaction WILL NOT occur on February 29”.
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