The weeks just seemed to drag on waiting for the October 11th closing date on our new condo in Cabo. We spent the time studying all the photos, making lists of all the little things we wanted to do (absolutely needed an island in the kitchen) and dreaming of all the evenings we would spend on our patio gazing at that amazing view!
We also spent a great deal of time working through the foreign loan process. We had hired a mortgage broker and they looked after translating and processing the documents that the finance company required. An escrow account was opened, and we deposited the down payment and necessary fees into the account and carried on with sorting through it all.
Finally, everything was in order and our flight to Cabo was booked so we would arrive in time for the closing. We were beyond excited! The one last thing that still needed to be done, which they said was just a formality, was for the property to be appraised, basically to confirm it exists and to justify the value to support the loan.
That’s when suddenly, one week before closing, our whole world came crashing down!
We received an email from our mortgage broker advising that the property appraisal came low, in fact $60,000 USD less than the sale price! What!?? This meant that the finance company could not lend us the amount required, and in order to carry on with the purchase, we would have to come up with the difference. For us, this translated to about $80,000 Canadian dollars!!
We were in utter shock. We just sat there thinking how could this have possibly happened!
That’s when the emails really started flying back and forth. There must have been at least 12 people – us, our mortgage team, our realtor and his team, the seller’s realtor and her team, the seller and her lawyer – all involved in these emails. Each person was chiming in making a comment of disbelief and questioning how this could have happened and what happens next.
All the realtors were even more shocked than we were. They all agreed that this property in no way should have been valued so low. All the comparatives in the complex and neighbourhood supported the sale price. It made no sense whatsoever as to how this appraiser came up with his final number.
After a lot more back and forth, it was decided we would hire another appraiser to do another formal appraisal. But this time, one of the realtors would meet him at the property to provide him with listings of other comparable properties so he would have all the information needed. This was finally scheduled for October 11th, which was supposed to be our closing date.
In the meantime, we still had a flight booked for October 10th and we started to question if we should even go, since there was no way we would be closing right now. The notary suggested that if we were still coming to Cabo , we could simply sign a power of attorney so when the sale finally closed, we would not have to fly back on a moment’s notice to sign anything. That made sense to us, as well as gave us some relief, so we decided to keep our travel plans as originally scheduled.
For this trip, we had originally booked a hotel for one night only as, after that, we had planned to be staying in our new condo. But sadly, this wasn’t an option now. We checked at the hotel to see about extending the dates, but the nightly rate was now much higher than our original booking, and we didn’t want to pay that much for a hotel stay. Instead, we started looking around at some vacation rentals to see if there was one in the area that was still available to book.
Then we found it! There was a condo for rent in the exact same Ventanas development that we had originally liked so much, and was what got us started on this journey. We cancelled the one night at the hotel and booked our stay at the Ventanas condo.
Lorne & Shari
We arrived in Cabo late on October 10th, picked up the rental car and drove down to Cabo and up to the Ventanas residences. We were to meet Cristina, the property manager at the condo where she would give us the keys and explain everything about the unit and the complex. Unfortunately, while driving up to the property in the dark, we ended up taking a wrong turn and couldn’t figure out which way to go. We called her to let her know we were lost (she was not surprised, as even in daylight, it’s easy to get lost getting up to this property!) and she gave us better directions and warned us to watch for cows on the road (umm…what??!!) We finally made it to the condo and met Cristina in person. She gave us all the info and keys and said she would be back when we were ready to leave.
We were so excited to be there. We were staying in one of the first condos we ever liked in Cabo, and Ventanas is right next door to Cabo del Mar, where our new condo was. We could literally see our new place from the patio of this condo. After looking around the condo a bit, we went out to grab a bite to eat, came back and headed to bed as it had been an exceptionally long day.
Sleep was going well until about 2am, when there was such a loud bang, it almost knocked me out of bed. I turned to look at Lorne and he wasn’t there, so I got up and found him, outside on the patio, standing there just staring at the sky. It was one of the biggest thunderstorms we had ever seen, the lightning lit up the sky with such bright light and appeared to be so close. And the thunder, OMG, it was enough to knock your socks off! After about 15 minutes of watching this, the sky suddenly opened, and the rain came barrelling down. It was like someone had opened a dam, there was just so much rain coming down so fast. We ran inside and watched for a bit and then headed back to bed.
The morning came quick, the rain had stopped and we were back to beautiful blue skies and that amazing view!
The View
We made a quick breakfast, then headed into town to sign the power of attorney at the notary’s. As we were driving down the hill, we found big portions of the road were washed out from the storm the night before, so it took some tricky manoeuvring to get down to the highway safely. We found the notary’s office and went in and waited for our appointment. While sitting there, we heard this weird noise, and turned to look outside and it was just pouring rain again! We realized then that this was our first trip ever to Cabo where it rained. It was a bit weird for us!
We finished signing everything, thanked her so much for her help and headed out to the car. It had stopped raining again – the rain only lasted about 10 minutes – so we decided to go for a drive. That’s when we found all the rain that had just poured down: it was flooding all the roads! We were driving though it and the waves were coming halfway up the car doors. We had never seen anything like it!
After our drive, we picked up some groceries and headed back to the condo. During dinner that night, we started talking about this condo, our original dream condo. We talked about the layout, the functionality, all that we liked about it, and then suddenly we seemed to have a list of things we did not like about it. Some little things we would not have realized if we had not actually stayed here. Don’t get me wrong, it’s still an amazing condo, with a view to die for, however we quickly realized that this was not the condo for us. Instead, the one we were trying to buy was indeed perfect for us!!
By the end of the day, we were advised that the final appraisal had taken place as planned, and he had received all the necessary comparable information. We were promised the report would be ready on Tuesday October 15th. Everyone was on pins and needles.
Night View
A few days later, it was time to pack up and head home again and Cristina came to the condo to pick up the keys. We started chatting and told her about buying a condo next door at Cabo del Mar and the problems we were having with the appraisal. She mentioned that if we ever needed a property manager, she would be happy to offer her services and she gave us her card. We thanked her and headed out, back to the airport and back to Vancouver to wait for the outcome of the new appraisal.
October 15th we were so nervous waiting to hear the news about the appraisal. Finally the mortgage broker emailed saying they had received the preliminary report and it was good. The appraisal came in at exactly the selling price which is exactly what we needed, and exactly what everyone expected. We were over the moon happy! Such a weight had been lifted from our shoulders. They advised that the appraiser promised to have the final report to them the following week.
Everything seemed fine and things seemed to be progressing until October 29th when we received notice from the seller’s lawyer. He advised we had defaulted on the closing and with the completion of the sale being at a standstill he was giving us until the end of October (in 2 days) to complete the sale or they would relist the condo and we would lose our deposit. We reached out to our mortgage broker who advised that their hands were tied. They could not finish the financing without the formal report from the appraiser, which they still had not received. Apparently, no one could locate him. He wasn’t answering phone calls or emails and no one could seem to get in touch with him. It was like he just fell off the edge of the earth or something. Now we were stuck and didn’t know what to do, and time was quickly running out.
We had only two days to figure something out and we basically had two options. First, we could back out of the deal, but that would mean we would lose our $70,000 CAD deposit, or second, we could pay the difference but that would mean we would have to find an extra $80,000 CAD somewhere. Lorne had always been adamant that the value was there in the property, so after a very long discussion, with me asking Lorne over and over and over again if he was sure, and that we weren’t missing anything obvious, I finally agreed that we would go for it. We would find a way to come up with the money to complete the sale.
Lorne and I always felt we were rather advanced with balancing our budget and juggling money when necessary, but coming up with these additional funds meant working at the expert level of the juggling and balancing act. Once again, we had two laptops going, multiple spreadsheets opened and calculators working overtime. We were sorting through all the options: looking at this credit line and that credit line, at this credit card and that credit card, and at that new line of credit offer that just arrived in the mail yesterday, until we finally had the total we needed. That day, we know we brought the juggling and balancing act to new levels! We quickly gathered the funds and sent the wire transfer to the escrow account right on the deadline.
Once again, after we did our part, it was simply a matter of waiting. We had to wait for the funds to get there, wait for the lender to complete the financing, wait for the notary to process the documents, wait for all the pieces to fit into place. And throughout it all, we were still dealing with an angry seller who didn’t want to wait any longer. There were still threats of suing us and threats of relisting the property, but we had done all we could do, we just needed to wait. But that of course was the hard part.
And then, believe it or not, we closed! Five months after having our offer accepted, two months after the original closing date, five weeks after sending the additional funds, on December 8th, the sale finally closed.
We had been dreaming of this moment for so long, how we would celebrate, how excited we would be. And in the end, when all was said and done, and after all the stress and angst we had been through, when we got the news, we simply cried.
Up Next: The Arrival