Fade to Gray: Buying a house - The Saratogian

Fifteen years ago, I was looking for a house to rent in Rensselaer County.

I had a budget of about thirteen-hundred bucks a month to work with. After calling around on a couple of places, I had a realtor ask why I wasn’t just buying a house? I explained that, due to life circumstances, I didn’t have a big chunk of money to put down or the thousands I’d need for closing costs. He assured me, none of that was required.

Keep in mind; this was 2006 right before the bubble burst and the housing crisis nearly bankrupt the country. If you’ve seen the highly entertaining movie “The Big Short”, you know that a stripper with bad credit could buy a house back then. Excuse me, I meant exotic dancer. I was not a dancer or remotely exotic, just a TV guy who didn’t realize how relaxed the rules had become.

I never should have been able to buy my house in North Greenbush but six weeks later I was holding the keys and mowing the lawn. Within months of my purchase the bottom fell out on the housing market, and I felt like the last guy who made it onto Noah’s Ark.

Since that purchase, my life has changed significantly, getting married to a lovely woman and adopting a little posse of special needs dogs. Suddenly the half-acre of land around the house felt a bit cramped. So, my wife and I spent the last year and a half looking for a new home.

Finding a house in this market has been tough. For months it seemed you’d see a house go on the market, only to watch five people offer the seller more than what they were asking for. It left you unable to buy anything you wanted, unless you were willing to get into an open-ended bidding war, which I was not.

I’m an old-fashioned guy, I think you name your price and if someone gives it to you, the deal is done. Back when I left Channel 13 to do the news at Fox, my future boss asked me what I’d do if my old boss topped his offer. I said, “I’ll tell you what it will take for me to jump, if you hit that number, I jump. End of story.”  And jump I did.

In any event, after more than a year of searching and being disappointed, we finally found a house we liked with nearly four acres of land around it. Room for the dogs, quiet for my wife and privacy for me. It was a win, win, win for all of us.

What I didn’t realize is how much things had changed with the banks and credit unions since the housing crisis and my last purchase. Where nobody cared about anything back then, suddenly everything you have and do is suspect. You are suspect until you can prove to the lender that you’re not Al Capone.

You think I exaggerate but I don’t. The lender ran the requisite credit reports on my wife and me more than once. I had to give them months of bank statements, which had to be signed and stamp by a bank employee to prove I wasn’t cooking the books.

If you have any deposits in your account that are more than a few thousand bucks, they want to know where that money came from, even if the bank statement shows where it comes from. In my case, I took a small loan from my 401k to cover come closing costs and they needed me to contact the investment group and prove they sent me the check.

At one point I had a meltdown and asked the mortgage lender if they wanted me to subpoena the bank records and ask for their surveillance video from the day I walked into the bank and deposited the check? They didn’t appreciate my humor and assured me that everyone goes through this.

Once I got through all of that and had my loan approved and rate locked, I was told not to open any accounts, make any large purchases, or pull my own credit report. It felt like one extra side order of rice at Taco Bell could cause the entire loan to collapse and the closing would be canceled.

In the end, I held my breath, and everything worked out. It’s always fun at a closing when you’re the buyer because everyone at the table seems to get some of your money. You don’t mind paying the seller, the realtor, or the lawyer, but when the government holds their hand out and gets paid for doing absolutely nothing; that’s annoying.

I know the tighter rules are all a result of the housing crash. It’s typical though, that the guys who caused it, got rich and walked away unscathed, while the rest of us now jump through hoops. In the end, it’s all worth it. My blind and deaf puppy now has a nicer yard to sun himself in. When it comes right down to it, in the grand scheme, nothing else matters.

John Gray is a news anchor on WXXA-Fox TV 23 and ABC’S WTEN News Channel 10. His column is published every Sunday. Email him at johngray@fox23news.com.

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Fade to Gray: Buying a house - The Saratogian
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