Appraisal is no abstraction when it's my Oklahoma home

For a year, I waited to get sufficiently past a couple of hiccups in making house payments before trying to refi. Month after month, I'd call in the house payment — if I didn't actually write a check and mail it — to Wells Fargo Home Mortgage. I'd trigger a recorded message that said something like:

“Heeey there, buddy, it looks to us like you might could stand to refinance your house! Wanna try?” (I'm paraphrasing).

So, the other day, I typed in an affirmative and before I knew it Geoff M. was on the phone asking me a bunch of questions, which kind of surprised me since, being an old dog, I expected Geoff to pass me off to someone with Wells Fargo locally. Nope. (Sorry, John S.)

Within the hour came an email with a filled-out loan application and other documents.

The next day came a FedEx package with the same filled-out loan application and other documents.

A day or two later in the U.S. mail came the same filled-out loan application and other documents.

Wells Fargo is anxious to refi people who can refi, clearly.

A day or two after that, Unknown, as it showed up on my phone, was ringing me up.

The nice lady was calling from Wells Fargo to make sure I had gotten all the stuff — and she seemed floored that I hadn't dropped everything and dealt with it. I'm pretty busy; and I don't sign anything without reading it; and, frankly, I'm suspicious of banks, which is something I inherited from my Depression-era parents that has been refreshed the past five years.

So, it was last Saturday, five days after I'd started the refi ball rolling, that I had time to sit down and read, initial and sign, in this order (because they were stapled in this order) the cover letter, Borrower's Certification/Verification Authorization/Financial Privacy Note, 4506T Request for Transcript Tax Return Instructions, Request for Transcript of Tax Return, Overnight Mail Charge Authorization, Price Range Protection Confirmation/Rate Lock Agreement, 3-Day Appraisal Delivery Disclosure and Waiver, Affiliated Business Arrangement Disclosure, Important Notice to Homebuyers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Office of Housing-Federal Housing Commissioner, Energy Efficient Mortgage Fact Sheet, Special Information for Oklahoma Residents, Important Addendum to Uniform Residential Loan Application, Direct Endorsement Approval for a HUD/FHA-Insured Mortgage and, oh, the Uniform Residential Loan Application.