Waiting for the house to close. Waiting for the baby to come.

That's life these days.

Although the house closing was supposed to happen on Monday, a couple of minor paperwork technical delays on the buyers' end have pushed the date a bit. One of the first papers we signed acknowledged that closing dates can shift for this kind of reason. No cause for concern.

However, there may be an actual new cause for concern: yesterday's dive in mortgage interest rates (resulting from the Feds' takeover of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). Given the large purchase price of our house, it might make financial sense for the buyers to cancel the closing and forfeit their deposit and then go through the whole process again.

It's not clear to us that they can really do this even if they want to, and we don't have to facilitate this kind of action if they take it (i.e., we don't have to sell them the house) so they risk losing the house altogether. It seems to me that it might make sense for them to close, then immediately refinance.

If they do pull something like this, I'm inclined to say thanks for the deposit and put the house back on the market - the new interest rate might bode well for attracting new buyers. I might even let them go through with us again with a penalty for making us wait. We'll see.


As far as new baby goes: Shelley's had contractions for the past three nights to the point of calling her midwives for advice, but not to the point of visiting the hospital. Today would be a nice birthday: 9/9/08. But she'll come out when she wants. Perhaps she's waiting until we close.