long time reddit lurker but never have really posted anything. But I've been looking here at this sub for some time, just watching the questions and comments.All of this is very raw and still evolving by the day. This is both of our first borrowing application and contract for a property. All I can say about the home-buying process so far is everything is happening at light speed.
Some background info:
We are average run of the mill 30 year olds. We currently rent an apartment in a city in North Carolina with our two furry balls of sunshine. We have decent jobs, I work in voip tech support 52k/y salaried for a small enterprise (about 15 employees) and my wife in an HR-like position 37k/y hourly for a larger local non-profit. My wife [32F] is remote and I 30[M] am not (this plays a large role later on). We have for about 4 years been saving, looking and hoping to relocate to the mountains of western North Carolina. Everyone at my enterprise knows I am the "mountain man" and that this has long been the path my wife and I have been pursuing. At this enterprise I serve much more than a capacity of simple tech support. I maintain the datacenter, I update the voip platform, I run all hardware and OS diagnostics, I develop in house automation tools and services, and am the chief executive officer's personal "fixer" as he takes a very large role in the companies direction and activities. As an example most recently he has taking up a political avenue for supporting political Candidates and I developed both a bulk SMS tool and the middleware that integrates it with the opt-in forms on the Candidate's websites.
We find a house:
We find a house online. A somewhat rough cabin (just in need of some TLC) in a small town roughly 30 minutes from Asheville, North Carolina. We find a local lender, who is listed as an approved lender for the FHA first time homebuyer's downpayment assistance. We start the process. Long story short, we look for several months as the house is under contract by the time we connect with an actual realtor. Ultimately, it goes under contract 3 times (two from the same individual who lost financing, and a third potential buyer who my realtor hinted had seriously lowballed and offended the seller. From the beginning he made it clear that this seller is not going to budge much on the price. We have visited the property 5 times now, had two official inspections about 6 months apart, and a contractor friend who came with me to help me take a personal look and give me advice on some of the inspection items. The house has plenty of problems, mostly cosmetic, but a few things that definitely need to be addressed within years and not decades. But we loved it. It is perfect for us. Small, quiet, a small yard with greenery. A wood cabin style interior and a huuuuuge front porch and most importantly to us, a beautiful view of the mountains.
The process starts moving quickly:
We start the borrowing process. Nervously and anxiously jumping through the borrowing checks, paystubs, economic organization statements, student borrowing documentation, disclosures, inspections, due diligence and earnest payments, the appraisal, getting closer and more excited by the day, as everything was coming together. We passed through processing and underwriting and the end of due diligence is set for 2 days from now. We were nearly set to go. A few pending documents were all that stood between us an closing. One of these documents was my "Request for Verification of Employment". I got the panicked call from my borrowing officer last Friday during lunch.
The form:
I know this is a federal form but I'm not sure if its the same everywhere, to be specific it is Fannie Mae Form 1005. It was sent by the borrowing processor to my companies CFO last Wednesday. It asks very generic questions: date of employment, base pay for past year and year to date, my position, etc. One of these questions, item 11 "Probability of continued employment". It has enough room for a small statement, maybe 2-3 words total. I imagine for "likely, unlikely" something along those lines. When the CFO presented this particular question to the chief executive officer, the chief executive officer took ownership of responding to the form, and wrote "see attached" on item 11 and wrote verbatim this footnote on the document. Please note the typos are not mine. I typed it exactly as it was written minus the names.
"Answer to question 11 Above: OP FULL NAME as expressed to me that he plans to relocate more than 3 hours from his current home in CITY NAME making it impossible to be at work in CITY NAME every day thus his 'Probability on Continuted Employment" is highly unlikely because of his inability to be at work in downtown CITY NAME, NC daily M-F, 8AM-5PM. He as requested to work remotely which is not at option available for this current position with our enterprise. His employement requires he be in the office every day." signed – NAME President/chief executive officer.
About the chief executive officer:
For some quick backstory of how this relates to my chief executive officer. He knew about the plan to move to the mountains, he knew that my wife and I had started the house hunting process, the only thing he did not know, is that we were now in the final stages of a borrowing application with a close date at the end of this month. Him and I had a verbal agreement from when the house hunting began, that regardless of what happened with the house-hunting/move. I had guaranteed him that I would continue to be in the office every day until my the end of my current apartment's lease term in APRIL of next year. This is in addition to a long term goal of working out a remote or hybrid remote agreement. From the beginning I had made it clear I did not want to leave the enterprise.Now something to note, I have worked for him in this office over 4 years. Over half of our 15 employees are remote, one of which who serves in a very similar role to mine. The chief executive officer himself only comes into the office 2-3 days a week. Him and I up to this point have had a very good relationship. He takes me and my boss out to lunch every Friday. I am his fixer, his "Yes man". He needs something done, I'm the employee who doesn't complain. One of the core servers goes down at midnight? I'm the one who drives out there to do something about it. I am also the sole owner of operating knowledge of his many servers and services he runs outside the companies primary platform.
Afternoon last Friday:
After the panicked call from my borrowing officer, I immediately met with the chief executive officer about it in person. He played stupid, saying he had no idea it would jeopardize my borrowing application, that he didn't know what was actually written and blamed it on the CFO. (this in particular was just a straight up lie to my face.) I've worked for my boss long enough to know who wrote this angry typo-ridden rant. Even if I didn't have the form with his signature at the time. He said a great many things with a straight face that just blew my mind. To name a few: "The mountains are usually a place people go to visit, but not to live", "the industry right now its a horrible idea to buy a house", "I can't believe you would choose to live in a new city without renting there first", "all companies are bringing in their remote workers, remote working is going away". But ultimately, his justification for this statement is that this was a "federal form" and he can't lie on it. I told him I never intended him to lie, and that what he did was far more than just a honest statement. In an attempt to salvage this at that time, I simply said "Ok, well then let us reach a new verbal agreement so that you don't have to lie. I promise you now, that I will continue to come into the office every day until you and I come to another agreement." and reaffirming my desire to stay with the enterprise in the long term, that we can approach some remote hybrid solution. My goal at that point was to have the lender resend the form, him to simply say "we have reached an agreement". He thought the remote hybrid solution after April was very reasonable, and agreed.
Yesterday:
He called me into his office at around 3:45pm. He told me to take a deep breath before we spoke and that I would need it. He then told me he had prayed about this, talked to his father about this, talked to his preacher about this and thought about it all weekend. He even called my borrowing processor he said 3-5 times?? Asking about the specifics of the form, lord knows I have no idea what they talked about. He decided no. He would not retract his original statement, that I would get tired of the commute in less than a month. He gave me the same justifications as before. Saying the move was not a smart idea, the mountains in general were not a good idea, and that remote workers are low quality. The one small adjustment he said he made in the resubmission is adding the line "likelyhood of continued employment until April is EXCELLENT". but also saying in the same breath that my borrowing officer told him this would not affect their decision. I told him I understand, shook his hand and went back to my desk.Since then he texted me at 10:00pm last night to ask me to make an adjustment to his Candidate's sign up form on his website and sent me a list of 6 links to articles of various companies bringing in their remote employees. Other than that he considers the issue over, and has called me 4 times today as usual for the various projects we have. My wife and I are devastated. I've seen my boss do things like this before to people who wronged him, but out of all of the things that we stayed up sleepless about during this process, it was never this. This was a stab in the back from an assailant we never saw coming. I know I'm probably getting close to the character count for this post, but long story short I don't think the issue was ever about being "honest" on this form. I think he's a narcissist, and purposefully attempted to sabotage my borrowing, to exert control over my life out of revenge for me daring to move away. And as of now, he might still succeed.
Closing:
At this point we don't know if the borrowing can be saved. I have a really good friend in the mountains who is VP for a rapidly growing plumbing enterprise and is working to get me a job offer immediately. Today, I've spoken with the owner and he seems like a real stand up guy. Telling me he has heard great things about me and even offered me the job AND to buy us out of our lease. Whether or not he can offer me enough to placate the lender, I won't know for a bit longer. The position would be for an in house IT position that will fill the void of empty time with plumbing. I'm thinking I might just take it, and give it my all.
Lastly, she doesn't use reddit. But I want to shout out my wife anyway. She has a history of moderate to severe depression, but during this past week she has been the one thing keeping me strong. She's giving me space when I need it and attention when I need it. She's taking it in stride and reminding me no matter what, we will work it out, and no one can stop us from getting to the mountains eventually. Thanks reddit, for letting me get this off my chest.
Edit: Thank you for all the thoughts and advice both the supporting words and the harsh ones. It is clear to me now that I did make a lot of assumptions of how this would play out before it did. I also need to make an effort to understand the viewpoints of my chief executive officer and the lender. I also know now, that I must leave this job.