Escrow Can Be Fun, If You Play It Right
We just bought our first home and we learned one thing: Escrow is like childbirth. No matter how many books you read or people you talk to, nothing can really prepare you. Ultimately, you’re on your own.
We started out fairly cocky. We managed to dive into the wire basket and plastic storage box that make up our “files” and come up with the bank statements, paycheck stubs and tax returns our lender required. Nothing to it, we thought. Just keep cool and soon we’ll be turning the key in our own too-small, too-expensive piece of the American dream.
How naive we were. The next day the lender needed a letter explaining a late credit card payment in 1989. “The dog ate it,” I thought. I typed a letter describing a tragic mishap on the way to the mailbox that unavoidably delayed the check.
The same day we got a letter from the escrow company that asked us to read and acknowledge an indecipherable old tract map and something that appeared to be a sewer permit from 1982. We obediently read and acknowledged.
The letters and demands kept coming. Addenda from the seller. Forms from the broker. Physical inspection. Termite inspection. Geological inspection. Appraisal. Everything had to be read and acknowledged, and most things required a check for $100.
As we got closer to the closing date, the requests got more urgent. “I need your last paycheck from your previous job,” said the lender. “If I don’t get it by close of business, we’ll have to delay the escrow closing.”
We had, by then, faxed him just about every piece of paper in both the wire basket and the plastic box. After a frantic search, I located the second-to-last paycheck stub from my last job, under the cushions of the couch. I hoped it would do.
It did, but that wasn’t the end of it. The very next day our lender called and asked for the divorce papers from my previous marriage. I guess the stress of the whole thing started to get to me, because I could have sworn he also asked me for a note from my doctor explaining why I missed gym in 1973.
By the time my husband came home, I had gone off the deep end. I was going through the china cabinet and unwrapping tinfoil packages in the freezer in search of more documents to send. “What are you looking for now?” he asked. “I want to send the lender documentation that I flew up from Brownies to Girl Scouts,” I said. “I could just shoot myself for not keeping better records.”
My husband quickly got into the spirit of the game. “Let’s read and acknowledge our Scrabble score from last night and send it in.”
“And let’s send in these dental X-rays from your root canal,” I suggested. “How about this photo of my grandparents in the old country?”
“Sounds good. Just to be on the safe side, let’s throw in the stats for my fantasy baseball team last season. That oughta hold them for awhile.”
Escrow started to get a lot more interesting. The next day I faxed my sixth grade report card and the results of a home pregnancy test (negative.)
All that week I faxed pages from my diary from 1969. My husband read and acknowledged every page of a phone book from Tonopah, Nev. We didn’t hear anything from the lender, and the escrow company was strangely silent.
Escrow closed right on time. We love our new condo. In the days since we moved in, we’ve faxed “Gravity’s Rainbow” and read and acknowledged every picture our toddler has drawn in day-care. Escrow can be a lot of fun, if you know how to do it.
