Closing Time — Savannah by Season

Did I wake my husband up with an alarm to Semisonic's 1998 masterpiece "Closing Time" on our house closing day? Yes. Yes I did. It was such an exciting time, but I truly just kept waiting on some bad news phone call from anyone who would tell us we wouldn't be able to buy the house. That was pretty much my daily thought from the moment we had an accepted offer.

Quite the optimist, I am.

That Friday, we both went to work like normal and took off the second half of the day to get all those final papers signed. ALL. Those. Papers.

Let me back up a bit to let you in on a little behind-the-curtain action. The folks who worked to make our closing date happen were truly a dream team.

Prime Blankenship, our real estate agent, answered so many of our questions along this journey. As first-time buyers we sure had a lot of them! Whether it was a late-night text or phone calls in the middle of the afternoon, he completely took care of us, answered those questions and eased our fears of the unknown. We actually had our first accepted offer the day after seeing houses with him for the very first time. I'm talking 12 hours after shaking his hand, BOOM, accepted.

Due to unforeseen circumstances, we had to switch loan officers about two weeks before our set closing date. Now, if you're like me and you like a good plan in place, you probably would have been freaking out too! When our old loan company let us know they wouldn't be able to get it done in time, Prime gave us some recommendations and that's when we met Tom.

Tom Kellam of Supreme Lending was our loan superhero! He called us up the same evening we reached out and talked us through the process of what we'd need to get done in the next couple days. He assured us we could hit that original target closing date, which is what we really needed to hear! He and his team gave us a "Needs List" the next day and we all got to work. Luckily, we had already been through most of it all before, so it was just a matter of re-gathering the information. We had our list completed and an appraisal was in the works by the next evening. I'm still amazed at how fast this all played out! From that first phone call to closing was 10 days. Y'all. TEN DAYS. See why he's a superhero?

Back to closing day, signing all those papers is exactly like everyone had told me about! My poor, terrible signature just got worse and worse with every new page. It's basically just a single rippled line now. I'm technically a doctor at this point.

*ba-dum chsh*
#DoctorHumor
#IllBeHereAllWeekFolks

Once all the papers were signed, sealed, delivered, it was time to wait for everyone to get paid; AKA: funded. There's a lot of folks that have to get their money before you're actually given keys to your home. So, we waited.

Actually, in an anticlimactic turn, we didn't get to leave with keys in our hand at all! Our house has a digital code entry and the physical keys were actually just sitting inside on the kitchen counter. We just had to wait an hour or so for someone to give us the number code once funding was cleared. That's what we get for being in a digital-age, I guess. *womp womp*

I imagine walking out of the hospital with a baby is kind of what we experienced walking into our home for the first time (I mean, well, not exactly, but as close an example as I can use). "This is ours?" "We can keep it?" "Why did they let us have this?" "What do we do now?!" "Oh my gosh, we have so much responsibility." "Oh, I love it!"

Yeah, it's probably the same.

If you are in the Dallas area and are interested in starting the home buying process, please give my friends Prime and Tom a call and tell them I sent you. We truly could not have asked for a better first experience. We feel more knowledgeable, confident and trustworthy thanks to both of their hard work. Couldn't have done it without them!