Those of you that are homeowners know that over the last few months, mortgage rates hit a low not seen in 30 years. I'm a sensible person; I set out to refinance.
When you're a randomly employed free agent, a refinance requires a bit more paperwork than your standard W-2 employee has to gather. Additional years of tax returns. An intensive gathering of documented assets. A lot of explaining to the broker about your status. Now, imagine, if you will, tossing a foreign spouse in to that mix.
I moved in to my place on Capitol Hill in the summer of 1999. Interest rates at that time hovered around 7 percent. The Sunday before I moved, I came home from an afternoon of hiking in the Cascades to see my Austrian standing on the corner outside my building. He'd flown over unannounced to help me move. Of course we got married (not that weekend, but not terribly long after).
Fast forward through a blur of household repairs, skiing lessons, arguments about dinner, frequent flyer miles, the stuff that our lives are made of. Now, settle on me gathering papers for the refinance.
It wasn't too bad. I'm not a totally organized file clerk, but everything was obtainable. I had to borrow a copy of Turbo Tax to print up my 2000 return and handily the postman delivered my 401k and mutual fund statements just as I needed to present them to the mortgage broker. I'd just signed on as a subcontractor and I looked, to the parties that decide these things, as though I was employed. Rates were down, I had a job, it was all good. After about two weeks of paper shuffling, the broker sent me an email: We're all done with your loan! I was to save over 100 dollars a month on my payments and to recoup the fees in no time. I settled in to my project and waited for the title company to call.
On Thursday, they did, but not with good news. My foreign spouse, the non-resident one, the one that lives in Austria, yes, that's literally halfway around the world, was needed to sign the papers. Could he please come in and do that?
Um. No. No, actually, he can't.
I guess you could say I freaked out. The title company was no help. "Let's FedEx them over, he can get them notarized at the consulate and send them back. We need them by Tuesday, okay?"
There were many phone calls between myself and the title company and the mortgage broker. There was much outrage on my part. I trawled through my email to find the questions about my martial status, which had been asked a good six weeks prior to the signing. My answer: Yes, I am married. My husband is not a US resident. My mortgage brokers response to why this issue had not come up sooner? "When I called your home and got your answering machine, it was a man's voice. I just figured he was here."
My contact at the title company finally came up with a modicum of common sense. The title house scanned the documents and emailed them to the Austrian, who printed them out on his side of the Atlantic. The title company didn't achieve full redemption, however, as they included a full list of instructions regarding how those documents should be returned. The requirements included special instructions regarding margins, print quality, notarization credentials, and the color of ink in which the papers were to be signed. Their specifications rivaled those remaining in place in Austria from the time of the Kaiser's empirical bureaucracy, which had yet to play a role in my refinance.
The Husband printed up the papers and called me to say he couldn't get them to meet the required format. His printer takes a standard European paper size and the margin requirement was an impossiblity. Furthermore, some of the documents were a bit smudgy, an issue that originated with the scan at the title office. There was nothing to be done. I told the title office that they'd get what they got, and that was all.
The Husband took the 30 pages of legal jargon to the notary in Irdning. The documents needed to be translated in to German for the notary's review. Once he understood the documents they could be signed and notarized and then sent to Leoben for verification. Following that, they could be express mailed back to the title house here in Washington. Thankfully, the notary agreed, in a very un-Austrian manner, to waive standard procedure, but not before relieving the Husband of a tidy 200 Euros.
Thus lightened, our intrepid hero headed over to the local UPS equivalent to ship the papers back to the title house via super-fast-transatlantic-and-yes-you'll-pay-the-price delivery. 72 hours, guaranteed. The cost? About 60 dollars. "Oh, it's too late to send them today; the last delivery went at 1pm. You can drive to Vienna and drop them off at the airport, if you like." Vienna is three hours by car on a good day. No, there is no weekend service. The papers will fly out on Monday.
For twice the expense that we've been stuck with, the Husband could have hopped a flight to Seattle. I could have bundled his jetlagged self in to the car and driven him directly to the title house where he could have scrawled his signature on the papers in person. We then could have returned to my newly refinanced home. While he slept off the flight, I could have planned how to spend the money I'd saved by refinancing.
There's no moral to this story. There's no happy ending yet. We're out an additional 300 dollars for the hassle. You can bet I'll be asking the broker to foot the bill on that. In the meantime, I'm trying to count the blessings that my transnational semi-employed lifestyle provides. Bright snowy winters punctuated with marvelous baked goods. More camping days than most people get in a lifetime. A new language. A larger and somehow more personal world view. A marvelous good sport of a husband who not only shows up to help me move, but who knocks himself out on last minute notice to help with the labyrinthine requirements of refinancing. A stamp in my passport that makes half the world my oyster. Two disparate yet equally beautiful places to live.
Okay. Okay. I guess it's worth the hassle.
