Anxiously Awaiting

Well here I sit still in the old house wondering when I will be able to move. We placed the contract on a house to buy in November of 2005 so it's been way to long to try and close. But, what's been holding it up?
Well first we offered what we felt the home was worth to the sellers. The sellers rejected our offer and came back with sort of a counter, they basically just said they wouldn't take below $70,000 for the home, due to condition we offered $58,000.
Well, we love the house. It's in need of a lot of work such as a new roof, redecking and singles, new soffets, repointing the chimney, stucco patches, resurfacing the foundation, some plaster work inside, supports under the front porch, updated electrical, large projects like these.
Well we needed a 3-5 bedroom house. If there were three bedrooms we needed a den or something to utalize as another bedroom, five bedroooms would have provided an office if there was no den. We have to stay in the childrens school district, prefered 2 bathrooms and a 2 car garage. A fire place was soemthing to dream about.
This house has 2 floors and a full basement. There are 3 rooms in the basement, one room which is alone 1200 sq ft and then two other rooms for general storage and a canning cellar. The first floor offeres front and back enclosed porches, a livingroom, dining room, kitchen, office, full bathroom and two bedrooms. On the third floor there are three bedrooms and a full bathroom with access to a crawl space attic. The home is a block from my sons school, in my daughters school district, with a good sized back yard, fireplace and a one car detached garage.
For our price range we really felt this was the best house we could find. It had the right number and extra bedrooms, a seperate office, which is desperatly needed when you work remotley, a fireplace we didn't plan on. So we sacraficed a two car garage and ofcourse condition.
We couldn't let this slip away so offered $72,000 with a 3% sellers concession so upon closing the sellers would pay $2210 in closing costs for us. Well this is where things started to go oh so wrong. The financing as far as income and credit checks was all in place, but, the house appraised for $68,000 in need of serious repairs. The bank would not finance the home unless all the repairs were taken care of, or, if some where delt with, by the sellers and the price was dropped to about $65,000. The sellers were in no position to do repairs. This home was their mothers, who had passed away, and most of the sellers involved lived outside of the state. It would have fallen on the one in state child left to repair the home, clean it and the like and then they would still have to drop the price. They wouldn't and given their situation I didn't feel comfortable asking them too either.
I found out about a grant through our city. My city is a good sized area but run down in many places. The city os opffering a program to rehabilitate houses in the city to boost population and such. We went on the waiting list and asked the sellers to wait until we were picked up on the grant. They agreed since the waiting list was only, as we were told, 6-8 weeks.
February 22nd 2006, we finally get picked up for the grant, so much for that 6-8 week waiting period. We had to go in for a meeting with the city about what we could afford, our credit and the like and for them to explain the program. They knew we already had a contract on a house so they reviewed this as well. We had to take the sellers concession out of the contract, if we had left it in the city would not have been able to give us funds for the home, or not as much as the grant covers. The city needed to send someone into the house to inspect it and see what could be done with the grant moneya nd if they felt the grant would cover this hosue, if not, they would have said sorry we can't give you the grant to purchase the house.
The city inspector went in and found that with the grant program he could not only replace the roof, bring in a new electrical service and do plumbing work and a bit more, with a seperate portion the city had they would be able to replace all the windows and doors in the house as well. The city passed the house and we were on our way as of February 25th.
We bugged the mortgage broker to death, where was our closing date? He claimed to be waiting for paper work from everyone, all the time. He stated he needed the city inspection and a new appraisal and the cities commitment letter etc. But, when we called the city we found all thise paper work had been sent to the mortgage broker, except a new appraisal. March 14th we had a meeting with the mortgage broker to update our pay stubs and pay for the appraisal. The mortgage broker, finally, that day sent the paper work to underwritting, more than 2 weeks after he had the information, he was holidng up the process.
My fiance, at this time, was finishing his real estate licensing course. He planned on keeping his normal job and getting into real estate. March 16th 2006 we found out the company we work for was planning a huge reduction in work force effecting about 800 employees. My fiance was laid off due to this, but he had already taken his licensing exam and signed with a broker so we were all set.
The appraisal was done on the home, there were a few repairs we would need to do before the final sign off. We would need to put a patch on the foundation, scrape a few windows and put some primer on them to get the appraisal to pass. In all about $20 worth of work we told the sellers we would do due to their circumstances.
Well, for what ever reason, the mortgage broker reran a verification of income, only on my fiance though. The bank then knew he was due to be laid off and halted the process on the mortgage.
I have been looking to change positions and careers as well but the bank won't concider my income at this point they say he has to ind a job immediatly to get the process rolling again. He has been out on interviews and the like and will hear next monday with one company if he deffinetly has a job or not. In this time the sellers are getting angry the property hasn't closed. It's now been almost 5 months since we put the contract on the hosue, renegotiated the contract and the like. They almost backed out of the deal but the intown seller talked them into waiting, for now.
So here we sit, not sure when we will be moving or where, if the house is ours or not, knwoing we have to be out of this home soon. My company is further reducing work force and I fear at anytime its my turn to be let go. We need to close on this house so that we can get on with our lives. Theres just too much going on at this point in time.