so, i've tried to start blogging again, and in the process of doing so stumbled back upon one of my favorite late night activities... not that! get your minds out of the gutter... i'm referring of course to clicking on "next blog" link after posting and reading the random blog that pops up.
what was always nice about it was that there is always something new, interesting, strange, or revealing in every blog no matter how well written or how recent the post.
now all i get is advertisements, blogs is duetche, and blogs that break out of the blogger tool bar rendering the "next blog" option unreachable.
it's sad how my moment of nostalgia was crushed by the internet's decline toward commercialism and thrusting us all towards their virtual billboards.
:o(
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Monday, October 12, 2009
i've never had to work so hard to aquire a payment or home ownership the great ameriacan nightmare part 1
in the life of mike zafiroff
as i venture into another almost certainly unsuccessful attempt at blogging, i am realizing that my ability to spell has greatly deteriorated since the last time i've written anything of any substance. seeing as i have actually, while writing these first sentences, have misspelled 13 words including "attempt" (which i actually missed the second "t" and transposed the "m" and "p") and "writing" (which apparently adopted the missing "t" from "attempt")... i also decided against using a word that i could not figure out how to spell even with spell check, this should be interesting.
any who... the cause of recent re-invigoration of my desire to put text into the universe is two fold. first, randy has a blog where he posts above-average to great comic strips on a daily basis: http://www.thegraduatescomic.blogspot.com, which (in addition to a lap top that actually works consistently) should in all reality allow me easier and more frequent access to my own blog. Aside from trying to show up randy with verbal banter and general nonsensical rhetoric i have also made the life changing decision to move out of my parents' basement (against my better judgment... and the betting pool my friends had going) into the world of home-ownership. while i am financially secure enough to afford this particular parcel of land with well arranged sticks on it, acquiring said land and sticks has proven an adventure somewhere in the realm between frustration and irritation. however worth it this house will be ... and i'm certain this house will be worth it... the process rubs me the wrong way.
ok here's the skinny. we (referring to me and my lady friend (i will be punched for this, but feel it is necessary as her leg has just crossed to my side of the bed and i now am tilted and forced into the upper left hand corner of the bed)) after roughly 5 months of looking, and offering, and being counter offered, and counter offering the counter offers, and being rejected by sellers, and getting houses sold out from under us, and realtors being crappy, and switching realtors twice, and looking at every house within 20 min of my work (some twice), and finding out that the "short" in short-sale is not in reference to a timetable, and realizing foreclosure almost always equates to shit-hole, and questioning our ability... nay! our possibility to even find the right house or even a house at all, we find a gem and offer an amount of money that we will call "x" for said gem of a house, the seller, whom we shall call for purposes of both ease and anonymity "seller" accepts offer... and the peasants rejoice!...however, seller has to bring a large sum of money to the table to make this deal go through. this amount of money, "y," is substantial even in comparison to "x"... roughly, y is expressed algebraically as y= 1/2(x). this is fine and dandy until seller who has y in what he thinks is a 401(k) account realizes that his 401(k) is actually a 401(a), which in and of itself has a clause that prohibits this particular type of transaction. now some may be confused as to what the hell a 401(a) is, as you should be. i spent roughly 3 days mulling over the various documents that represent the 400 style savings plans and have found that not only is there a 401(k) and a 401(a) but also a 401(b), a 403(k) and a 403(q)(4) as well as added to my general confusion of the american banking system. this crisis was averted after the ability and apparently amazing credit standing of seller to get an unsecured personal loan to cover the difference "y" until his 401(a) was available to him.
next came what i like to call the paperwork scramble...however it has also been called the paperwork shuffle and the greater deforestation of the northern amazon. of course, with every legal, large money transaction that takes place everyone involved needs to play the cover my ass and make sure i get paid game which loosely translates to "sign here." this in turn means lots and lots of paper work, signed and copied and singed again. in the midst of the paperwork shuffle a typographical error was made and the shuffle starts anew... a change is made lets resign that shit. my favorite quote from this was "you've basically already signed this on [form whatever] but you need to sign this one too." and of course you try to read the fine print and circle speak on those forms but all you really end up doing is listening to your mortgage guy and thinking "i have no idea what the hell i'm doing" reflecting on your complete and total incompetence regarding anything related to the real world.
after signing the papers, and before signing more papers, and submitting more papers they (referring to the almost inevitably a bastard underwriter) have to approve the papers you've submitted including income, and credit scores, and debt outstanding, and assets, and purchase agreement, and rights to my first born, and results of full body scan insuring i'll live long enough to pay back the loan. then they scrutinize every number and wonder where did that regular direct deposit into my account come from? i don't know...work maybe? ... my paycheck? ... are you serious? why did you overdraw your account only the next day to transfer more than enough money from your savings account to cover it? because i forgot to write it a payment in my check book and chase loves charging me $39 for a pack of gum. they ask the questions that no one would be concerned about... it is completely ridiculous how far underwriters want to go to cover their asses now... i understand being a little more cautious now after underwriters and banks almost crashed the country with giving jobless crackheads with no credit million dollar adjustable rate mortgages and selling them off as cdo's and getting credit default swaps to cover their losses, essentially betting against their own lame horses, but maybe, just maybe the pendulum swung just a little too far the other way, making it way too slow and difficult for legitimately qualified people with good credit to get a house. case in point... my income in 2007 was "a", in 2008 "b" and in 2009 (averaging what i'm making now over the rest of the year) "c". now, c is greater than both b and a, and b is greater than a. so my income has risen over the last 3 years, and considering i work on roughly 40% commission and do 75% of my business in the last 3 months of the year and that c is based on the 9 months i do 25% of my business c is not only greater than b but substantially greater! but my income is still brought into question because it'd be too easy to accept 5 pay-stubs, 2 w-2's and 3 bank statements. instead we have to verify through "the work number" which is pretty much useless because it wants to take my rate times my hours and ta-da my income... but what about my commission? because it represents roughly 40% of my pay!
finally, after overcoming my frustrations on all issues thus far, we come to today, when expecting a "clear to close" i get a "they want to review the appraisal." because they think burdick is as busy as m-24 and the house was built in 1930...apparently it doesn't matter that everything was redone in 2008!
through all of this i am glad that i will end up with this house, i just think this whole process could be streamlined and save everyone trying to get a piece of americana a lot of time, money, and frustration.
to recap
house snafu 1: y is less than x but greater than what the seller has available
house snafu 2: sign the paperwork over and over and over and over and over...and then one more time for shits and giggles
house snafu 3: underwrites no longer like underwriting, instead they'd rather find ways not to let your deal close
house snafu 4: fuck you "the work number"
house snafu 5: re-appraisal
if i don't snap and stab someone (read "the underwriter") and end up in jail for felonious assault, we should close before the 23rd and i'm looking forward to handing out candy on halloween, shoveling the driveway this winter, fixing the garage next spring, and ranting as much as i can in between about what my dad so eloquently called it ..."the great american nightmare"... home-ownership.
as i venture into another almost certainly unsuccessful attempt at blogging, i am realizing that my ability to spell has greatly deteriorated since the last time i've written anything of any substance. seeing as i have actually, while writing these first sentences, have misspelled 13 words including "attempt" (which i actually missed the second "t" and transposed the "m" and "p") and "writing" (which apparently adopted the missing "t" from "attempt")... i also decided against using a word that i could not figure out how to spell even with spell check, this should be interesting.
any who... the cause of recent re-invigoration of my desire to put text into the universe is two fold. first, randy has a blog where he posts above-average to great comic strips on a daily basis: http://www.thegraduatescomic.blogspot.com, which (in addition to a lap top that actually works consistently) should in all reality allow me easier and more frequent access to my own blog. Aside from trying to show up randy with verbal banter and general nonsensical rhetoric i have also made the life changing decision to move out of my parents' basement (against my better judgment... and the betting pool my friends had going) into the world of home-ownership. while i am financially secure enough to afford this particular parcel of land with well arranged sticks on it, acquiring said land and sticks has proven an adventure somewhere in the realm between frustration and irritation. however worth it this house will be ... and i'm certain this house will be worth it... the process rubs me the wrong way.
ok here's the skinny. we (referring to me and my lady friend (i will be punched for this, but feel it is necessary as her leg has just crossed to my side of the bed and i now am tilted and forced into the upper left hand corner of the bed)) after roughly 5 months of looking, and offering, and being counter offered, and counter offering the counter offers, and being rejected by sellers, and getting houses sold out from under us, and realtors being crappy, and switching realtors twice, and looking at every house within 20 min of my work (some twice), and finding out that the "short" in short-sale is not in reference to a timetable, and realizing foreclosure almost always equates to shit-hole, and questioning our ability... nay! our possibility to even find the right house or even a house at all, we find a gem and offer an amount of money that we will call "x" for said gem of a house, the seller, whom we shall call for purposes of both ease and anonymity "seller" accepts offer... and the peasants rejoice!...however, seller has to bring a large sum of money to the table to make this deal go through. this amount of money, "y," is substantial even in comparison to "x"... roughly, y is expressed algebraically as y= 1/2(x). this is fine and dandy until seller who has y in what he thinks is a 401(k) account realizes that his 401(k) is actually a 401(a), which in and of itself has a clause that prohibits this particular type of transaction. now some may be confused as to what the hell a 401(a) is, as you should be. i spent roughly 3 days mulling over the various documents that represent the 400 style savings plans and have found that not only is there a 401(k) and a 401(a) but also a 401(b), a 403(k) and a 403(q)(4) as well as added to my general confusion of the american banking system. this crisis was averted after the ability and apparently amazing credit standing of seller to get an unsecured personal loan to cover the difference "y" until his 401(a) was available to him.
next came what i like to call the paperwork scramble...however it has also been called the paperwork shuffle and the greater deforestation of the northern amazon. of course, with every legal, large money transaction that takes place everyone involved needs to play the cover my ass and make sure i get paid game which loosely translates to "sign here." this in turn means lots and lots of paper work, signed and copied and singed again. in the midst of the paperwork shuffle a typographical error was made and the shuffle starts anew... a change is made lets resign that shit. my favorite quote from this was "you've basically already signed this on [form whatever] but you need to sign this one too." and of course you try to read the fine print and circle speak on those forms but all you really end up doing is listening to your mortgage guy and thinking "i have no idea what the hell i'm doing" reflecting on your complete and total incompetence regarding anything related to the real world.
after signing the papers, and before signing more papers, and submitting more papers they (referring to the almost inevitably a bastard underwriter) have to approve the papers you've submitted including income, and credit scores, and debt outstanding, and assets, and purchase agreement, and rights to my first born, and results of full body scan insuring i'll live long enough to pay back the loan. then they scrutinize every number and wonder where did that regular direct deposit into my account come from? i don't know...work maybe? ... my paycheck? ... are you serious? why did you overdraw your account only the next day to transfer more than enough money from your savings account to cover it? because i forgot to write it a payment in my check book and chase loves charging me $39 for a pack of gum. they ask the questions that no one would be concerned about... it is completely ridiculous how far underwriters want to go to cover their asses now... i understand being a little more cautious now after underwriters and banks almost crashed the country with giving jobless crackheads with no credit million dollar adjustable rate mortgages and selling them off as cdo's and getting credit default swaps to cover their losses, essentially betting against their own lame horses, but maybe, just maybe the pendulum swung just a little too far the other way, making it way too slow and difficult for legitimately qualified people with good credit to get a house. case in point... my income in 2007 was "a", in 2008 "b" and in 2009 (averaging what i'm making now over the rest of the year) "c". now, c is greater than both b and a, and b is greater than a. so my income has risen over the last 3 years, and considering i work on roughly 40% commission and do 75% of my business in the last 3 months of the year and that c is based on the 9 months i do 25% of my business c is not only greater than b but substantially greater! but my income is still brought into question because it'd be too easy to accept 5 pay-stubs, 2 w-2's and 3 bank statements. instead we have to verify through "the work number" which is pretty much useless because it wants to take my rate times my hours and ta-da my income... but what about my commission? because it represents roughly 40% of my pay!
finally, after overcoming my frustrations on all issues thus far, we come to today, when expecting a "clear to close" i get a "they want to review the appraisal." because they think burdick is as busy as m-24 and the house was built in 1930...apparently it doesn't matter that everything was redone in 2008!
through all of this i am glad that i will end up with this house, i just think this whole process could be streamlined and save everyone trying to get a piece of americana a lot of time, money, and frustration.
to recap
house snafu 1: y is less than x but greater than what the seller has available
house snafu 2: sign the paperwork over and over and over and over and over...and then one more time for shits and giggles
house snafu 3: underwrites no longer like underwriting, instead they'd rather find ways not to let your deal close
house snafu 4: fuck you "the work number"
house snafu 5: re-appraisal
if i don't snap and stab someone (read "the underwriter") and end up in jail for felonious assault, we should close before the 23rd and i'm looking forward to handing out candy on halloween, shoveling the driveway this winter, fixing the garage next spring, and ranting as much as i can in between about what my dad so eloquently called it ..."the great american nightmare"... home-ownership.
Labels:
in the life of mike zafiroff,
randy hampton,
the house,
work
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