The Nightmare on Fox Hollow
Navigating Loans as a Self-Employed Borrower
I dreamt of mortgage applications last night. It didn’t feel like a nightmare. It was just one of those out of body experience type dreams of watching yourself do something. I was sitting at my laptop uploading financial documents to my loan officer. That was is it. That was the entire dream.
The real nightmare is my current reality of trying to finance a mortgage with our primary income being a 1099 with an extensive amount of deductions. I’m now uploading pdf documents of tax returns and paystubs in my subconscious; that’s how in the thick of it I am on this lending process.
I’ve been blogging our family travels working as catastrophe insurance adjusters and living full time in a 37 ft camper with two very large dogs on my Instagram. I’ve decided I’d prefer to blog about this more on my Substack. So hi, hello, I’m Becka. Welcome to my favorite place on the internet: Substack.
December 20th, 2024 will be one full year living full time in the RV. When we unexpectedly sold our prior home and had to be out the week before Christmas 2023 ; we had no time to decide where we wanted to move to next. We decided to buy a camper to move into as a temporary solution where we could live for 3 months, 6 months at the very latest. We sold 1/3rd of our personal belongings, put 1/3rd in storage and have 1/3rd of our items with us in our home on wheels. We are set to close on (or before, per our contract) December 19th, 2024 on this new property. 364 days later. I’ve been referring to “this house” as “fox house” in my instagram stories. So I’d love to tell you about Fox House. I know the title eludes to it being a nightmare; but the land and home are actually a dream. It’s the house buying process that is an actual nightmare.
Fox House
I realize now, it was a dumb name choice. The only reason I call it Fox house is because the street it sits on has Fox in the name. And now the general public can deduct the location of my prospective home with a little less research. Albeit, I live in central Texas. We have two protective giant breed livestock guardian dogs that are over 130 lbs each. It’s also widely known that everyone owns firearms round-these-parts’ and you should never wonder onto someone else’s property in rural Texas-America.
This makes me cringe a little that I live in a place like this. On the other side of the coin, I sleep like a baby at night with zero fears of home invasions. And since I’m a firm believer that we live in a day and time that you can easily find out whatever you want about people on the internet if you're creepily weird enough. There’s not a whole lot I can do to prevent that so I mine as well tell you this fact too. The other word in the street name is Hollow which made me smile when I saw the Zillow listing because it was a nod for me because the street I grew up on also had Hollow in the road name. Here’s a link to my most enjoyed essay I’ve written on Substack to date that describes that special Hollow in Tennessee. Heaven's Barn Door: Don't forget the Funyuns
I’ve shared the Zillow listing of the house we are under contract on with a few friends that reside outside of Texas. All of them uninamously are shocked at the difference of pricing for land and homes in Texas vs their own state. Some of them even sent me listings in return of properties in their area that are double the sales prices with 1/2 the square footage and positioned on a lot with less than a quarter of acreage. (The three friend’s examples were, Minnesota, Virginia and Tennessee) I would always counter with “Yea, it’s what keeps us in Texas.” Word is apparently spreading that land is so cheap affordable in Texas because we’ve made offers on two other properties and been outbid with cash offers or were under contract before we could even scheduled a showing due to an influx of people moving to Texas. Fox house is a 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom 1796 sq foot home on 4.78 acres. There’s also a barn, two sheds and above ground pool with custom deck and fencing already on the property. The house needs some major TLC but we received the inspection report and know exactly what we are getting into. This listing price for this property was $215,000!!!
The Zillow listing has 36 uploaded photos and I’ve full zoomed and studied each photo. We made an offer along with two other different people on the same day for this property. This was day 4 of it being officially on the market. Our offer was the one accepted. Our relator scheduled a showing on day 3 of being on the market. We toured the property via FaceTime for 10 minutes. We are out of the state finishing up hurricane work in Florida and technically made this winning offer sight unseen. We likely won’t be able to step foot on the property until a week or so prior to closing when we return to Texas. But that’s not my biggest fear right now. My biggest fear is a loan officer calling me and saying I’m sorry Mrs. Shumate, we just can’t get you approved for this loan. It wouldn’t be the first time a lender made empty promises. I’m trying to stay hopeful that this time will be different.
I can’t imagine a life without this house at this point. I’ve romanticized myself in all 36 pictures and painted the walls with my mind. I’ve zero-scaped the front landscaping with river rock around the house and positioned a blue agave cactus on the corner that receives the most direct sunlight. I’ve torn off and reinstalled a new black metal roof on my digital mood board. It’s giving: Cozy Modern Cottage and the 4.78 acres is screaming “Homestead me”. I’ve daydreamed bout Christmas lights lining the A-framed roof. I have fantasized about watching the dirt and grime pouring off of the rock siding as my husband stands on a ladder and pressure washes years of un-maintained stones and grout. I’ve sipped coffee on the back patio deck watching my dogs run in the pasture and my son soar on the wooden swing we decided to hang in the big shady Oak tree.
The only thing standing in the way of my family getting to call these 5 acres home is locking in a conventional loan with our lender. We have the credit scores, we have the 20% down payment, but as self employed entrepreneurs it’s the dreaded Debt to Income Ratio percentage that haunts me when I lay my pretty little had on my pillow each night.
Getting approved for a mortgage as a self-employed borrower feels like walking through a foggy cemetery at 3 in the morning. You’ve got your head on a swivel. You’re watching for any sudden movement. You direct the flashlight along the path to prevent you from tripping while briefly scanning around your periphery to assure nothing is lurking around the graveyard that might catch you by surprise. There’s a chill in the air but you came prepared with a light jacket.
You set your flashlight on a large rock and balance it against a natural crevice that beams the light toward your back pack that you unzip to remove your jacket. You begin pulling the garment out as it unravels and the cuff of one of the arms snags in the back pack zipper. BAAAAAHHHAAHAHHHAAAA. You hear a deep voice with a roaring laugh echoing in the distance that startles you. As you stand abruptly with your pack and jacket, you knock your flashlight of the rock and it slams to the ground. The beam of bright linear light disappears and you are abruptly in complete darkness.
There’s a loud rustle of the leaves in the distance, you drop to your knees and you are frantically sweeping your hands across the ground desperate to find your flash light. You can feel the damp leaves and moist soil pack underneath your fingernails. Your hand skims across cold metal. Your flashlight! You grip it tightly toying with the end cap that has loosened to the point the batteries are not making connection as you can hear them bouncing loosely on the springs inside. You begin hearing the leaves rustle in even closer proximity to you than before. You feel your heart pounding as you try to steady your breath. The bellowing deep laughter begins again and you want to grab your ears. It is nauseatingly loud.
You are repetitively jamming the on switch of the flashlight with your thumb. You begin screwing the end cap tighter in your hand, as you begin backing away from the awful taunting laughter. You trip over a large tree root falling backwards trying to brace your fall with one of your hands. You feel a sharp stick pierce the meaty palm of your hand and pain shoots down your wrist. You lean up off the ground by digging your elbow into the wet dirt and grip your other hand tighter around the flashlight. The light suddenly beams out blinding you for a full breath. Your eyes readjust and you point the light out in front of you. You see a headstone with deep etched words that reads: “Student Loans: $9,456.23”
You hop to your feet, a tinge of pain shoots down your wrist again and you can feel a sticky wetness dripping in between your index and middle finger. You begin to sprint to your truck abandoning your back pack. The flashlight’s beam pulses up and down with the staggered bounce of your run. You hear the leaves shift and a large presence to your left. You shine the light to west of your path to your vehicle to assure no one is chasing you and SLAAMM. You collide on the path with a large figure that feels twice your size in stature. You stumble but you don’t fall. Your light whites out his face disorienting him. Your eyes adjust and notice it’s your loan officer, Chris. The deep haunting laughter begins ringing in your ears again. BAAAHHHAHAHAHHAA. HE BOISTROUSLY EXCLAIMS. YOUR DTI PERCENTAGE IS A 50.02%. AND YOU NEED LESS THAN 50%. I CANNOT FUND THIS LOAN.
And then I woke up. I decided to lie down for an afternoon nap. I was exhausted from staying up till 1 a.m. the prior night creating a 2024 profit loss statement for our storm chasing business. I reached for my phone and there was a voicemail from my loan officer, Chris asking me to call him. The nightmare flashed in my mind as the phone repeatedly rang.
“Hello.”
“Hi, It’s Rebecka Shumate, sa’sorry I missed your prior call. What’s the update? ”
“Well Good news, we’ve got everything through underwriting and the interest rate is locked in even lower than we initially worked up in the worksheet. Looks like we are good to go and on track to close 12/19/2024.”
I felt a tinge of pain down my wrist and caressed the meaty part of my palm as I said, “Well, that is great news!”
If it’s okay with you, before you go…Can we take a breath together?
Inhale…2…3.
Gently exhale 1…2…3.
Becka 🎠
12/19 is my anniversary. Glad we will share the date as the day something special happened!