Argh

(Yup, Lori. I sold the condo. Mostly.)

There's this pesky little quirk about recording the documents (and closing escrow). The Los Angeles County recorder is a bit of a stickler for having the entire trust deed recorded. Seems my escrow company transmitted only the first two of three pages, leaving out the signature page. The county recorder -- noticing that the pages said "1 of 3" and "2 of 3" on them -- rejected the document for lack of "3 of 3." Especially since the third page was a signature page.

Escrow found the missing document but was unable to file yesterday.

I was really annoyed by this. Really really annoyed. I shot off an email to my agent which was a masterpiece of passive/aggressive writing -- as the frustration of still not being rid of the condo on top of having packed for 14 hours the day before, and paying the movers overtime to be sure to be out by close of escrow -- put me in that place where I'm simultaneously angry and on the verge of tears. Particularly because I couldn't understand why they couldn't refile the documents on the same day -- as they found the missing page before 10:00 a.m.

I ultimately found the county recorder's website which explained that, when documents are filed by a messenger or third party, they actually have to be submitted the day before and then get picked up the next day. So my escrow had sent the wrong documents on Monday (Tuesday being a holiday) and got them rejected when they went to pick them up Wednesday morning, and resubmitted Wednesday for a Thursday pick up.

OK, fine. Made sense. Still annoyed at the escrow for not proofreading their damn documents. Real estate agent had the good sense to tell the escrow guy to call me because (well, I expect the conversation went something like, "she's really pissed off"). He called and attempted to placate me with (a) apologies; (b) an extra $100; and (c) telling me he'd already paid off my mortgage.

I let him off the hook for this, even though (a) he's still a moron for missing the third page; (b) $100 way doesn't cover the overtime I paid the movers; and (c) paying off my mortgage was most likely a huge violation of his escrow instructions. If I was the buyer, I'd be pretty ticked for giving $80,000 to the seller's credit until such time as the deed in my favor had been recorded. I also imagined a vast legal quagmire if, for some reason, we don't close this deal.

Wish me luck for today. Damn thing better record now; I cancelled my insurance on the property as of this morning, so if it happens to burn down, I'd really like it to be owned by someone who is not me.