Super Needy Underwriters

I’ve been living in my house for five-ish years. I’ve been renting. When I first moved in, I was leasing to purchase and was supposed to buy it after a year or two (I don’t remember). But I am a “job” hopper and I never really stay anywhere very long if I’m not happy. And I’m not super hard to please, which means that most jobs and/or bosses just suck. So I move around alot. I used to literally move around alot in my younger years. This is the longest I’ve ever stayed in one place. So one day a couple months ago, I went to my bank and my super teller asked me what my next big goal was. Apparently Fifth Third trains their people to be super proactive in the customer service realm. So I told him that I was hoping to buy my house at the end of the year. He said that I should get together with the mortgage guy now so I can see what else I need to do to get my credit where it needs to be. I had been working on my credit for a while. I had just started actually getting credit cards to build my credit. I absolutely hate credit cards. If I don’t have the real money, I don’t want it, but thus is the way of the world and so I agreed to meet the mortgage guy.

He’s a super nice dude and he genuinely wanted to help me. He asked me all the invasive questions, what’s your social, how much do you make, how long have you lived there, how much do you pay, can you prove it?

I answered all the questions and “voila!” I was approved for a mortgage!!!

Yay! Good for me. All the credit crap I had been doing was paying off and I could buy my house six months ahead of schedule.

That was two months ago.

Here’s the thing about mortgage companies and title companies and real estate folks in general: those mother fuckers are so nosy!!! They want to know everything. Literally, everything.

I got an email from one of the bankers with a long list of 12 items that they needed to proceed. Yes, a whole dozen. W-2’s from 2016, a letter telling them of my job hopping ways, my last 4 paystubs, my last 2 years tax returns, and on and on and on.

So I wrote a “snarky” (according to the underwriter) letter explaining all of it. At that point, I thought they’d pull out and say that they decided they didn’t want to work with me. But no. Instead, they sent me another letter saying that they needed 1. Clarification of a judgement against someone named Angela Wright. They wanted to know if it was me and what it was all about if it was. 2. Why my account had overdrafted on 7/15,7/22 and 8/5. And 3. the money I have in my savings is $1200 short of what I need to have for closing because of the super high homeowners insurance policy that I had gotten from Liberty Mutual.

I may have lost my shit a little when I got the email and decided that I was going to write an even snarkier (is that a word?) letter giving an explanation of the above inquiry and I thought that it might be fun to share said letter that I sent to the underwriter, mostly because apparently this jumping through hoops to get a house thing is a regular occurrence. So I am hereby granting you permission if you are going through anything similar to copy and paste any or all parts of this letter to use as your own when writing love letters to your own underwriter. You. Are. Welcome.

Sorry in advance that it is so long. It was literally meant to take up an obscene amount of his/her time.

 

 

Dear Super Needy Underwriter, 

 

Hello again, I hope life has been treating you well and you’ve been keeping yourself busy planning a super fun vacation after all this torturous mortgage stuff. 

 

Here is the rest of the information you need so that we can get this party started. 

 

1. The title search showed a judgement against Angela D Wright. I know that the title company has since figured out that Angela Wright was a porn star with a judgement against her and not me, but I just wanted to put it in writing that Angelique Wright is the only name I’ve gone by aside from my maiden name Carpenter which I made the horrible mistake of giving up years ago. 
2. As far as my overdrawn checking account on 7/22, 7/30 and 8/5, I can only come up with a few reasons why that could have happened since I have my account set on the “responsible adult” setting that should not let me spend more than I have in that account. So, feel free to pick any of these as I don’t have a clear answer for you: 
   1. I have a teenage son who was starting school and needed clothes 
   2. I like to have a few too many drinks before I sing karaoke or do open mic poetry 
   3. My boyfriend is a raging alcoholic who was really busy self destructing over the last few months and I was paying his bills and mine. And keeping up two households is really hard 
   4. My dogs eat a lot of food and they have very refined pallets
   5. All of those “issues” occurred on a Monday, which is the day before payday and I like to make poor life choices on the weekend 
   6. In this world of instant gratification, there are some things I can’t live without like ad free wordpress and personalized domains. 
   7. Sometimes I pay for sex. Even though I try to use cash, please see option 5 again. 
   8. The new impossible burger from burger king. 
   9. My sister decided to run off to Arizona as if that were a great idea and got stranded and I paid for her to come back here and then helped her get a place when my alcoholic boyfriend decided he needed a place to stay because he was getting evicted because I stopped paying his bills. 
   10. Duck Food (I really like ducks). 
   11. Bills
   12. Horseback riding
   13. Chai tea
   14. Velvet posters and metallic markers
   15. Touch tunes
   16. Overdue library fines
   17. Pornhub.com
   18. Tennis balls for my dogs
   19. Sending my friends who are more broke than me money because being broke sucks and also, I like writing inappropriate things on my zelle (you’ve probably seen them and if you haven’t, you should). 
   20. Hula hoop tape
   21. Greensky bluegrass tickets in Colorado  (that I’m trying to sell because now I can’t afford the plane tickets because I’m buying a house instead) 
   22. Pickles
   23. Encyclopedias
   24. A hoverboard that never came 
   25. A t shirt that says “I’m not for everyone.” 
   26. A copy machine to make counterfeit money so I can pay my future mortgage. 

 

I could literally go on and on but at some point I have to call the insurance company which leads me to our 3rd and final “issue.” 

 

3. I have [secret tiny amount]  in my savings account. I can hustle up some more if I need to, but I just don’t want to. I will call the other insurance companies and find another (lower) quote so that we can make this happen by September 6th. 

 

Also, I’d like to say, for the record, that I have lived in said house for 5 years. I’ve always paid my rent on time. I have no plan on stopping just because the mortgage is in my name. If I happen to fall on hard times or quit this present job which I like to do every 6 months or so (as you’ve seen)  because I bore easily and my soul is a writer not a blue collar worker, I will still continue to pay mortgage. Maybe I will get a side hustle as a hit man or a stripper, or a sex worker in Vegas (all of which pay way more than my current gig) and I will ALWAYS pay my mortgage. After all, it’s not like it’s a $50k car, which incidentally I could have gotten with a paystub and a smile and driven off with it never to be heard from again. Thank God houses don’t have wheels. Anyway, thank you for taking the time to read this from beginning to end. I hope I’ve answered all your questions. 

 

And please, if you need anything else DO hesitate to ask. 

 

Sincerely, 

Angelique (not Angela) Wright 

 

I haven’t heard back, but I think there’s a pretty good chance that I will end up being a renter forever after this one. I’m sure my landlord hopes that’s not the case. Time will tell….