More "Bank Time" Is Giving Me Ulcers

Beth and I are scheduled to close on our home purchase on November 10th.  Yet I'm still in a state of constant anxiety and stress over the whole thing.  Why now?  "Bank time" again rears its ugly head.

You see, we still have not gotten the loan commitment from our lender.  Despite assurances from everyone involved that this is a "clean" and "vanilla" loan and that it could be done in "10-14 days," we're now well over 20 days and still don't have the commitment in hand.

I've wired my closing funds to the settlement agency; Beth has gotten the rest as a cashier's check.  We've gotten insurance; we've arranged for the changeover of utilities.  Beth is even ordering some cork flooring to be delivered to the new home so that we can get the order in place in time to get several discounts before they expire.

Worse, the investor approval of the short sale expires on the 14th.   You see, in a short sale, the home sells for less than the sellers owe on their mortgage, meaning the bank (and its investors) will take a loss.  Thus they have to approve the sale, and the terms of the approval for this one are good through next Friday only.  Now, it's quite possible to get an extension; that's not impossible and comes up fairly often in short sale transactions... but given it took three months to get initial approval, I don't want to risk additional delays and potentially losing the entire transaction!

Why the delays?  Our lender claims their underwriting department is "swamped" with closings from last month (apparently themselves delayed!)  Fine--but we have to have ours in place; we can't just delay at this point.  Everyone involved claims there are no problems, but Jesus Christ!  Give me a break, people!  If there are no problems, commit the loan--the funds HAVE to be wired to settlement in time for Monday, or we can't close!

I hate real estate.