Finally!

The appraisal finally came back today. Surprise, surprise- it appraised for the exact asking price. They spent two weeks to come back with that amount. I mean, really, if you're going to cop out and give exactly enough for the purchase, then don't drag it out and torture everyone.

Next step- find insurance and wait for the underwriter to finish the review.

NINE days!

What in the world can be taking so long to get this latest appraisal back? Nine days!! The first appraisal was back in 2 days and I thought that was bad! I keep asking and every day the bank says "maybe tomorrow", over and over. I feel like my entire future is hanging on this stupid loan.

I didn't come into this situation looking for an old house to renovate. About a year ago I realized that if I wanted to be a parent, time was running out to take action. Having a decent home in a safe location was my first step. By a fluke, I learned of this house at the same time I reached this decision. Logically, the house drew me to it by dint of its location, on the same street as my sister, in a small Southern town with very little crime and being positioned as it was, 3 minutes from a fire/police station. There's also a deeper, emotional draw and it feels like home, like a warm, safe haven for my future family.

That being said, I'm still equally split between my desire to be a mother and my desire to travel the world. It's not that these are mutually exclusive paths, however given that I would be a single parent, it would be best if I remained here where I have a strong support system in place. This is my third effort to obtain financing to purchase this house and at this point, it's in fate's hands. Either I get the house and pursue motherhood, or I don't get the house and I save for a few months then ease my travel lust with a month long jaunt to Australia. Yep, sounds like a solid Plan B.

Crazy squirrel

"We called Animal Control to come get it because that squirrel just looked crazy. I mean it was just walking around with this weird look it its eyes, who knows what it could do." Yeah, not really sure how to comment on that recent statement by an acquaintance. All I could say was that I hadn't spent a lot of time paying attention to the squirrels in my yard, while thinking to myself how the Animal Control officer must have laughed his @ss off to have received that phone call! I particularly had trouble containing my mirth when the follow up was "Our neighbor just walked right out and got in her car with it standing right there staring at her." Huh, she didn't notice that crazy squirrel? Imagine that!

It did make me think of other squirrel behavior. I drive a curvy country road to work and lately I've noticed something rather odd. Coming around the curve, in admittedly, a rather race car driver manner, there's what appears to be a squirrel corpse lying across the road. My options are to swerve into the other lane not knowing what may be coming around the curve in the other direction or experience the crunch of animal bones beneath my tires. Without thinking, I swerve into the other lane but to my surprise, the "corpse" jumps up and runs across the road. The first time this happened I thought I was seeing things but after the 15th time, I'm fairly sure the local squirrel population has invented a new game called "possum", in which they test the reaction times of unsuspecting drivers.

What do you know...she was right, those squirrels are definitely crazy.

Cliffhanger

I can't stand the suspense of unresolved issues. The 2nd appraisal was Tuesday and I should have heard back today. All I got was a mysterious phone call that I missed by seconds and the voice mail said "please call us back about your loan conditions" but gave no further information. Needless to say I immediately called back but only got their voice mail. Now it's the weekend so I'm left w/ this dangling over my head. Argh!!

Doubt

I recently discovered a web site full of advice and blogs about renovating old homes- www.oldhouseweb.com. One blog in particular captured my attention and against my will I was compelled to read their story from the purchase of their property several years ago to the very recent sale of their home. It was entertaining, educational and scary as hell. I won't lie, it's given me second thoughts about tackling the purchase of an old house. If I'm able to proceed w/ the purchase, there will not be additional funds immediately available for repairs. I'll be forced to repair things over time as I'm able. Given some of the things that could be hidden, even after it's been inspected several times, I could end up w/ problems that I'm unprepared to handle financially.

I think I'm still willing to gamble but during this waiting period of probably another week before I have an answer from the bank, it's given me something to think about.

If you're considering purchasing an older home and want to find out information from someone who's been there, done that, check out this blog:

http://thedevilqueen.blogspot.com/

Hope or delusion?

I'm at a crossroads. I've been unable to find an alternative contractor but in the meantime, someone has come forward with an unbelievably generous offer of assistance. It's a long shot and I don't even want to think about it too much for fear of getting my hopes up. With any luck I'll know if it's viable by next week. On the one hand self-sufficiency is important, but if I let my pride get in the way I'll lose out on a fantastic opportunity that may not come along again.

I have got to find something to distract me for the next several days!

How many signs do you need?

A friend of mine recently said to me something along the lines of 'Exactly how many signs do you need to smack you in the face telling you to run away from this house?' Good point. I do wonder if perhaps some larger force is at work (fate, destiny, what have you) putting all these obstacles in my way to warn me off of this house before it's too late. How foolish do I have to be to continue to push past the obstacles that keep popping up? After all, they say the definition of insanity is to keep repeating the same action expecting a different result.

On the other hand, there's always the belief that nothing worth having comes easily. Maybe the obstacles are a way of testing my determination. Renovating an old house is not for the faint of heart- you're dealing with uneven walls & floors, unexpected problems, repairing anything can be twice as hard and they can turn into a black hole for your wallet and your free time. So, if a little trouble now is too much to handle, get thee to a new build with haste.

I have an appointment for a phone conference with my lender this afternoon. They'll be expecting me to tell them I have all my ducks in a row. Instead, I get to explain to them how my general contractor took a powder at the last minute and that, barring some miracle or lottery jackpot, another $3,000 cash is not possible. Can you call in sick for a conference call?

A parade of men

I've probably been in this house more times than any perspective buyer has ever been in their future home. After meeting with the home inspector and half a dozen contractors, my new lender decided to throw out the original inspection and schedule an FHA/HUD inspection. The upside of this being that the only repairs required would be the ones this inspector reported. Our repair list went from 61 down to just 2 pages!

Some of the requirements made sense- the ground around the foundation needs to be graded to direct water away from the house, the wiring needs to be updated, etc. However, some of the requirements were jaw dropping ridiculous. For example, the current heating system is a whole house furnace with vents in the living room and hallway floors. There is a vent in the floor of the 2nd story allowing heat to flow upstairs. Not that it needs it because a person could have a heat stroke just standing upstairs for too long. The FHA has decided this is insufficient heating and baseboard heaters need to be installed in each room on the 2nd floor. Baseboard heaters are electric heaters which can be purchased at Lowe's for as little as $38 but I'm not allowed to buy them myself. No, I have to pay a contractor $400, yes, $400, to "install" the heaters. Here's another example- there's a leak under the kitchen sink. To fix it will require tightening the connections or at most, replacing a section of the pipe, and yet I'm am being forced to pay a contractor $200 to do this for me. Seriously?!!

I have a family full of hearty men just itching to get their hands on this house to put their home repair skills to good use. Thanks to the geniuses in charge, I get to pay contractor rates for work we could do ourselves. The inspector's repairs add up to $14,000+, whereas I could do the same for about $7,000 including materials, beer & pizza (& electrician's fee). The powers that be at HUD have turned a program meant to help those with more initiative than money into a red tape ordeal that drags the borrower further in debt.

After the HUD inspection and the contractor bids, I was back to the house last Tuesday afternoon for the final (HA!) review- the appraisal. The owner had claimed he'd been told to list the house at $15,000 more than the asking price. Clearly someone was deluding themselves because the appraisal came back $3,000 shy of the asking price plus required repairs. The lender very generously offered to continue with the loan provided I came to the table with the difference in cash. Well, golly gee- I'd love to do that but where exactly am I going to find an extra $3,000? I knew I shouldn't have cut down that damn money tree.

And the hits keep coming

So for today's house drama...at 7:30am I got a phone call from the General Contractor. I didn't answer the phone because I was sleeping, which is what any normal person does on a Saturday morning. I called him back later, anticipating he would tell me he had completed the FHA paperwork. I could not have been more shocked to hear the following..."Uh, yeah- I'm lookin' at that list of things you needed and uh, this job is only for $2,000, and uh...I just don't think it's worth it." NICE! I'm freaking two weeks away from close and he chooses NOW to bail on me?! It's not that I don't understand the irritation involved in working w/ this loan. Believe me, I get it. If he thinks what they're requiring him to do is difficult, he should see what they're asking from me.

Just 8 weeks ago I lived in blissful ignorance of the reality of buying a house. I had just secured financing and put in an offer on "my" house so surely we could take care of the formalities and wrap this up in about 10 days, right? My mortgage lady, M, immediately started giving off a negative vibe. She herself had bought a house in need of repairs and her experiences were coloring her opinions. She warned me off but given my absolute determination, we proceeded to the home inspection. The inspector was very thorough, looking in every nook & cranny. Who knew this would turn out to be a bad thing? His report was 61 pages! The house needed to be re-wired but the other items were trivial. That didn't matter to the bank. They were out and I was left to find another lender. Which is how I ended up in this special kind of hell called the FHA 203k rehab loan, by all accounts the most difficult loan product out there.

The 203k loan allows you to purchase a house and obtain the funds to renovate right away, all in one mortgage. Sounds great! Until you get to the details, that is. The way this works is the purchaser must obtain bids for each item to be repaired, then a second set of bids for the same work, one set as the primary bids, the others will be supporting bids. The two sets of bids need to be in the same ballpark or they won't be approved. Fine, bids obtained, let's move on to the next step. The bids are reviewed for acceptability and now they want the contractors to adjust the bids to give the length of time to completion and the statement "includes all labor & materials." Fine, bids rewritten. Oh, wait- one of the bids needs to be typed because we just can't read his handwriting. Okay, I'll play along and go back to the contractor. Glad we're done w/ that and can move on. The next step? Go back to the contractors for a third time to request just a few items- liability insurance, license, references, worker's comp insurance and let's have them sign a contract as well. And remember the one w/ poor penmanship? Let's have him tell us exactly what kind of water heater he's going to install. I mean, really? As long as I know what's going in who the hell cares? His response was classic "Do they want to know what color underwear I'll be wearing when I work on your house?!"

And at this point is when the General Contractor (one of my three contractors- electrician, plumber, general) decides he's out. Yes, I get it, this has been one giant pain in the ass for all of us but here I am, two weeks away from close and back to square one.

Beginnings

I decided to start a blog to document my pursuit into home ownership so that later, I can look back on this time in my life and, hopefully, think it was all worth it. Right now I'm just trying to find the humor in it all. What else can you do but laugh when faced with roadblock after roadblock....two steps forward, four back. The light at the end of the tunnel beckons but with my luck it will turn out to be a train coming!

So let me start at the beginning....

Two months ago I found the perfect house for me. Not the perfect house, mind you, just the perfect house for me. It's located in a small Southern town, has tall ceilings, fireplaces and hardwood floors. However, it's 100 years old and like any century old building, it needs work. The owners are asking a reasonable price but trying to get a bank to finance an affordable. albeit old, house is unbelievably difficult. They'd rather I spent 4 times as much on a new house that I can only afford on paper, not when it comes to actually making payments.

Because the home inspection revealed that the house needs a few things fixed, the largest being the wiring, the only mortgage option available is the FHA 203k rehab loan, a product designed to test the nerves and send sane people over the edge. Every day the level of ridiculousness reaches a new high and just when I think I'm nearing the end, I get sent back several steps.

I'm determined to persevere and with any luck, there will be a house waiting for me at the end of this journey. Feel free to join me for the ride!