Friday, May 11, 2007

Approved

Yesterday I put in a bid on a townhouse that costs approximately one hillion jillion dollars. You truly don't know yourself until you sign your name to a document which promises a lot of people with a lot of lawyers that you are going to give them a lot of money.

Guiding Josh The Pilot and me in this process was our mortgage lending specialist, Jared. I was very frightened of Jared, as he was the man who was going to tell a freelance writer and a deeply in-debt pilot whether or not we could buy the hillion jillion dollar townhouse, and so I considered going to meet him in full Professor Clothes, but, as they were compressed in a small, pre-Big Bang, wrinkle-intensive ball, I had to make do with khakis.

I could have made done with the Space Bags, because as it happens, Jared is twelve. He is younger than me; he is younger than Josh. He is younger than every glass of wine I have ever raised to my lips.

To set us at ease about his age, he told us a story about his name. "Actually, Jared is my middle name," he said. "My first name starts with an 'R'. But, I guess, the year I was born, there was some kind of TV show? Named Dallas? And it was really popular or something? Oh, wow, really, you've heard of it? Well, who's this J.R. guy my mother didn't want to name me after?"

But he was a kind child. I think he understood that we were nervous, as my current annual income is pretty much Jared's age in cents and Josh has a credit rating of negative one thousand and five. We needed help from his youngest brother for any mortgage company to even look at us without sponataneously entering financial collapse from all the underwriters it would take to figure the astronomical interest rate.

"Your application was very organized," Jared said as we sat in big leatherette chairs and he climbed into his booster seat. "The highlighted sections were really helpful." I closed my eyes; this is exactly the type of thing I say to students who turn in papers with paragraphs that last four pages and who use "pimp" as an adjective. "Well, you seem to have stapled the essay without incident!" I will say to these students.

Jared said we were approved, though, and I opened my eyes and gave him a lollipop. He said thank you very nicely.

788 at: mbe@drinktothelasses.com

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Congrats on finding your first home. Remember "A house is made with sticks and stone, A home is made form love alone."

Good luck with th mortgage thing.

Anonymous said...

Good luck with your new home, MB and JTP. That's so exciting!

Anonymous said...

hahahahahahahaha

Anonymous said...

Ugh. My credit score is about what you get on the SAT if you spell your name right. As such, basically every mortgage lender has told me not to let the door hit me in the butt on the way out, and to come back only if I:

1) improve my credit score;
2) get a better job (duhhhh, and they wonder why my credit sucks), or
3) bring a large bag of gold and plop it on their desk.

I also had a "specialist" who looked like he was taking Mortgage Lending for third period, in between homeroom and study hall. What made it even more unnerving was that this kid was wearing a suit worth more than my car, and sitting in judgment of all my financial sins from the comfort of a giant leather office chair:

"Hmmm, I see you were once six months late on your credit card bill?"

Yeah, well that happens when they tell you that your account is closed and then six months later they finally get around to sending you a bill saying you're past due on monthly fees for the six months you thought your account was closed, with the addition of late fees, processing fees, and multiple-fee fees.

"Hmmmmm."

The sad thing is that buying the house I currently live in would be so much cheaper than renting, and if I can pay the rent I can obviously pay the mortgage, but since there's no comma in my credit score, these weird-logic mortgage brokers want to have Jesus Christ cosign my loan, or it's no dice.

Grrr. MB, can we add mortgage brokers to the celebrities' plane with all its engines failing? Thanks.

Anonymous said...

Dear classickelly,

Does it mean then, that if you fall behind on the payments of your home, they can take away your heart in return... or at least your blood?
;-)

Congrats on the acquisition of the new Casa de los Hunter.

Mmmm... this actually has raised a question. Mb, I believe you have never mentioned if you plan to change your name or not once you're married. Since you are an established writer now, this I believe can become a more sensitive subject than usual.

Anonymous said...

RPJ--
I believe mortgage lenders go right for the usable organs. You know anything they can sell on the black market to catch you up on those payments.
--Classickelly

Anonymous said...

RPJ: Actually, she has addressed the name change before. Legally she'll adopt JTP's last name, but as she's now a published author, her nom de plume will remain the same.

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