Dump Lender at Last Minute?

[Art Maydan]

I’ve been trying to buy an off the market duplex to house hack since March. We had a CTC 2 months ago and the lender said my wife’s final employment verification didn’t go through at the last minute. She had accepted a teaching job then, but the contract had contingencies which wouldn’t be met until all the teachers went through onboarding in August. We were concerned with this all along and the reason we switched to this lender was because he said he could work around it because she became a teacher through a program which offers her a minimum salary and that he would use that.

The seller didn’t want to give us an extension or do a lease to own at first, but his lawyer talked him into a 60 day extension. Yesterday was our mortgage contingency date and the lender says he just submitted our file to U/W and our lawyer requested a 7 day extension.

I’ve provided every document asked for quickly and clearly labeled. I’ve completed THREE new homeowner/landlord classes now. We have SIX MONTHS of reserve cash, great credit, and are now both employed. Today, he emailed me asking me to complete a class which I completed 3 months ago. I sent him the certificate. This is the third time he wasn’t able to locate files I had already sent. How am I more organized than my loan officer? Are his files organized in one of those rotating lottery ball machines, crumpled up?

After trying to reach him all day yesterday (former mortgage contingency date), he finally called me at 7PM with his usual completely unfounded confidence and said that the file should be through U/W by Friday and we’ll close next week. I thought loan officers were done putting the file together after it goes to U/W. How is he still asking me for documents? Furthermore, I’m at work. He thought I had yet to complete this class. How was he expecting for U/W to be completed by Friday when I wouldn’t even get the certificate to him by late tonight?

I’m worried these people won’t be able to close. I have no idea why that would be, but they never fail to surprise me. The seller is fed up and it is very unlikely he’ll grant another extension. Is it too late to dump this lender? There’s a good chance my current lender will close and there’s also a good chance that whoever I switch to won’t. What would you do?