Cool!

My face was starting to turn blue and my fingers and toes both have nasty cramps! :sunny:

That is excellent news! This home buying stuff will frustrate you until you finally sign. But, you will finally sign at the end of the day.
:up:

Just get me to the closing and take my money and give me the keys already. :O:

Hurry up and wait. :haha:

That's all good news Frau.
You may start planning a house warming party :woot:

Sweet holy crap, if I needed a sign that I made the right decision... I just got it. GET ME OUT OF THIS BUILDING PLEASE.

So about an hour ago I'm sitting here when I hear two men yelling outside. I peek out the window and there's a car pulled up in front of our front steps and two guys fighting in the parking lot. And by fighting I mean they are rolling around on the ground punching each other in the head. Okay, clearly this is not just two guys showing off by yelling, or just horsing around. There's a girl out there - who I later realized was my downstairs neighbor - yelling at them to stop. Which they do. So I start to walk away and then it starts again, okay fine, I'm calling the cops. I call 911 and report a fight at our address and they say they'll send someone out.

A few seconds later I hear a car engine roar, then there's a big... sound... crash... and the car roaring away and next thing I know a woman screaming. I run to the window and the car is gone and the girl is laying in the parking lot screaming. I call 911 back and tell them to get someone here NOW and send and ambulance because I'm pretty sure the fight just ended with someone being run over by a car.

Neighbors are now coming out to see what's going on. I get out there and the girl is up walking around screaming. Then I look over and the police are already there, one of them is talking to a young man and telling him to sit down and take it easy. Then I look down and realize the railing down the side of our front steps has been completely torn out of the concrete and is just laying there at the across the bottom of the steps. The window of one of the lower level apartments has been completely shattered. The young guy the police are talking to is bleeding from the head and face. The poor girl is screaming about her baby.

I realize she's my downstairs neighbor who I've talked to many times, she's a sweet girl, fairly young, always very polite and soft spoken. She's hysterical because not only did the other guy hit both her and the other young man - who is her boyfriend and the father of her baby boy - he did it behind the wheel of her car, which he then stole WITH HER BABY STILL IN IT.

Turns out he is the brother of the boyfriend, why he was there or what started the fight between them I do not know but it ended with him getting in her car and trying to run both of them down. He hit her and knocked her to the ground, injured her leg somehow, but I don't think she even noticed at first because obviously all she could think of was that this maniac just drove off at high speed with her baby.

He hit the boyfriend - his brother - hard enough to throw him face first into the other neighbor's window. He may have even pinned him between that and the car, because it sounded like he actually rammed into the building - so maybe it was actually lucky that it was the window and not the brick masonry. Poor kid's face and head are cut up real bad though.

After hitting the two of them this <expletive deleted> plowed up and over the front steps, taking out the railing, and leaving a big chunk of the car's body or bumper in our shrubbery... then he took off at high speed and drove back to where he lives with the cops chasing him. Don't know if they'd already arrived by the time he was driving off or not, but at any rate they located him and the car pretty quickly. He left the car when he got back to wherever he lives, abandoned the baby there as well, and took off on foot. I think I heard one of the officers say they caught him soon after, I certainly hope that was the case. The baby was fine and someone called the girl's father and her family was going to that location to meet the police and get him. The girl and her boyfriend both went off in separate ambulances but they were conscious and mobile so I'm hoping they'll be okay eventually.

But THIS is why I have to get out of this building... not just because it's a good time to buy, not just because I'm tired of living in a tiny little apartment, not just because I suddenly have the money to do better. This neighborhood was not like this when I moved here many years ago. Slowly but surely, this is what it's turning into. I don't know if it's the economy or what, but the quality of life around here and especially in this building have been going downhill for several years. Now it's gotten to the point where if you hear raised voices in the building or just outside, it might be some people horsing around or it might be an attempted murder waiting to happen.

Please let this closing go through without a hitch. I really, REALLY have to get out of this place.

Holy cow, sounds like you bought just in time.

Hope all goes well with the new digs and you find peace and quite and all the happiness in the world. Looks like you made a good deal as well. :up::up::up:

Being on the west coast I'll need a few days notice regarding the house warming party but have Champagne glass will travel.

Magic

Wow! I can't think of anything to say to that. Still holding my breath and fingers crossed.

Oh, here's the really good part. I talked to the girl this morning - she was already out of the hospital with a broken ankle but seems okay otherwise. The fight started because the boyfriend and the brother were bringing her back here in her car and on the way the brother took exception to the way the boyfriend was driving.

Yeah, there's no better way to make a point about someone else's bad driving habits than by stealing a car, running two people down with it, ramming it into a building and then leading police on a high speed chase with a baby rolling around in the back seat. :shifty:

I know, I know, it wasn't a situation where this individual was thinking rationally about what he was doing and why. BUT STILL.

I can only see one common factor. :p

Name change in order???
 

To Haus Frau Kaleun?:up:

Conger rats on the successful conclusion...put the sideshow down to life's peculiarities....been there too many times to take all that much notice anymore.

Well, this must make it really easy to say goodbye to your current neighborhood.
What a horrible experience.

I can somewhat relate to your situation, which is the same reason we moved two years ago to where we are now. Hope the rest of the closing goes smoothly. :up:

So... now we're just waiting for the stoopid bank to get its act together.

According the loan officer, he hasn't gotten the green light from underwriting yet. The last addendum we signed to the contract stated we had to close by the 19th, which is tomorrow, which is not going to happen. I don't know if we'll have to sign another last minute addendum or not.

As of this afternoon my agent was saying that the bank is having trouble getting the IRS to verify my tax returns. I can understand that the IRS is busy given the time of year... but the problem is not that they haven't gotten any response at all, it's that they've requested the info several times and their requests are being rejected. I don't know why, but according to my agent this should have been taken care of weeks ago. Why they haven't contacted me in all this time to let me know there was a problem and double-check whatever info they are using, I don't know.

Not sure how the IRS handles these things, but if they are cross-checking my SSN with the name also submitted by the bank, that could be a problem. Officially I use my first initial and middle name - that's what's on my Social Security card, all legal and financial stuff, etc. I "go by" my middle name but tax returns are probably under first initial, middle initial, and last name. If they are trying to match up my SSN with just my middle name, that could be a problem.

All the docs the bank has should have first initial, middle name on them. However there's also the fact that they continue to misspell the name they do have on record for me despite my having pointed this out a long time ago, manually corrected it on numerous docs I had to sign and return, and my loan officer's assurances that they would "sort that out" during the process.

So, I don't know.

Probably now the soonest I can hope for is next Tuesday. :stare:

Oh and their home mortgage dept also called my work today to verify my employment. Meaning, they called my office, asked for me by name, and then had ME verify that I worked there. Um... if I didn't work here, why would I be here to take the call? And if the concern is that I gave a fake work number and would answer it myself and pretend that it was my employer's place of business, wouldn't asking for the employer or a supervisor or somebody other than me be more appropriate? Whatever. JUST GET IT DONE ALREADY.