Loan application has gone 51 days and still counting, with no ETA
TL;DR: My partner and I are purchasing a new construction house, and the original closing date passed two weeks ago because the lender ordered the appraisal extremely late. The appraisal was conducted only 3 days before closing. One week after the missed closing date, we received a Letter of Default from the builder. We hired a lawyer and negotiated a new closing date, which is this Friday, May 22. Now, as of Tuesday morning, May 19, the appraisal report still has not been finalized, with no ETA. It has been 15 days since the appraisal was conducted.
Full timeline:
Aug 2025: Signed the contract with the builder.
Nov 2025: Construction started.
March 30: Confirmed the closing date with the builder: May 7. On the same day, we submitted the loan application with the lender, locked the rate, and informed our agent.
April 22: The Certificate of Occupancy was issued by the city.
April 28: The lender contacted the builder for the first time to ask for the final sales price and whether construction had been completed. The listing agent responded with the sales price only.
April 30: The builder confirmed construction was completed. The lender ordered the appraisal on the same day.
May 3: The appraiser tried to conduct the appraisal but said they couldn’t get into the house, so they did not do it.
May 4: The appraisal was conducted.
May 5: We asked the lender if there was anything else we should be preparing for before closing on May 7 (Thursday). They responded, “we will not be closing on Thursday.” This was the first time we learned that we couldn’t close. We sent an email involving the listing agent and the lender to ask for a solution immediately. We informed our realtor that we couldn’t close, and he replied, “OK thanks for the update.”
May 7: Original closing date. Our buyer’s agent asked if we had figured out a new closing date and final walkthrough date. We responded asking him to find out for us. He then asked who our lender was.
May 10: The appraisal report was received but had things that “need to be clarified,” per the lender, so it was sent back to the appraiser. No ETA.
May 12: We received the Letter of Default from the builder, saying they would take our deposit $99,000, and the house if we couldn’t close by May 15. We started calling lawyers the same afternoon. In the evening, the lender sent an updated appraisal report with the wrong sales price. We contacted the lender, and they said they would ask the appraiser to fix it again. No ETA.
May 13: We discussed the case with the lawyer we selected. He made the first call and left a message for the builder in the afternoon.
May 14: Our lawyer communicated with the builder. No actual progress that day.
May 15: The builder responded at 5 p.m. saying they were willing to give us another week, until May 22, this Friday.
May 18: The lender said they received the new appraisal report, but still had “some points that need to be clarified,” so it was returned to the appraiser again. No ETA.
May 19: Still going. No ETA.
May 22: New closing date, which seems impossible again.
May 26: The mortgage rate lock will expire. We locked it for 60 days.
The lender clearly knows that we have almost $99,000 deposit on the line and that we may lose the house if we can’t close. Since May 12, when we received the Default Letter, there has been a large email group with the builder’s management, the builder’s listing agent, the builder’s manager, the lender’s loan processor, the lender’s loan officer, the lender’s managers, people from the title company, our agent, and our lawyer. But they just keep saying they have no control over the appraiser and no ETA.
If you ask me where our realtor is, he was looped into communications between the lender and builder, but apparently wasn’t aware of any of it and didn’t even know we couldn’t close until we told him. He has been dead silent since this bizarre happened, except for showing up for the final walkthrough, during which he made zero communication with us.
We've started calling other lenders this morning, but other than that, I really don’t know what else we can do.