Im(PENDING) Excitement

This week, this happened. Subsequently, it’s been the best week ever.

I had been not-so-patiently waiting for that taunting “for sale” sign to change its status, and as a result of the home inspection repairs and appraisal that had happened in the days prior, the change in signage happened lickety-split.

Regarding the much awaited FHA appraisal, the report we received on Tuesday morning is so much more comprehensive than either of us imagined; the property is rare one in the city, which already knew but were thrilled to have confirmed, and challenged the appraiser to find six homes (they had to expand their reach to include a 3-mile radius, and this part of town isn’t remote by any means) to compare home values and validate our potential home’s worth. Every property chosen needed to be discounted or credited in its own way; all of the homes cited in the report were still quite different, like, waterfront, where ours is not, or on a small lot, where in ours is almost 2 wooded acres, or having drastically different square footage, number of bathrooms, or a different home style (colonials and ranches were most commonly used in our case).

The assessment of the property thoroughly impressed us, and broke down the home value compared to the value of the lot itself, which was a surprisingly huge part of the overall assessed value. It identified most of what we already knew about the house and its specs, but shockingly did not ask for any repairs to be made, hallelujah; we were almost certain that we would be required to update the electrical box (it’s on fuses, not breakers!) and repaint some areas of chipping paint on the windows and doors just to be able to secure our loan.

The home was appraised for our contracted price, which was really something that we weren’t expecting. The previous appraised price that was linked to the sale of the home was actually $30,000+ below where our offer stood, and we were more than a little bit nervous that we wouldn’t be able to afford the home if we couldn’t get a solid loan from the bank. The good news is that the appraiser matched the home value to our offer, a.k.a. was able to prove based on comps that our offer was valid, meaning that we will be able to get the loan we hoped for, but on the bad side it means we can’t negotiate the price of the home down a smidgen more (we optimistically hoped we could shave off about $10,000 more with a low appraisal). And let’s not talk about how this is going to affect the tax situation–taxes are crazy in New York–let’s just relax and reiterate how totally safe we feel in in that we aren’t radically overpaying for this gem of a house, or trying to make up its home value with home improvement projects.

We’ve had a final few rounds of signed papers to deliver to our underwriter this week (how they could need to know any more about us is unfathomable, they practically know our respective underwear sizes), and hope to hear of more progress in the coming days.

In regards to other things, now that we’re this far along in the buying process and feeling pretty confident that we can make it happen, we’ve let our minds wander back to other projects, things we’ve been meaning to do, update, clean, etc. before we rent this house, so hopefully you’ll be back to seeing posts from me on a more regular basis.

Happy dancing all around!