I never finished telling the story of the house purchase, did I?
It went something like this: the house appraised low. Very low – as in $30,000 less than the original price/first assessment. This was because, according to the place that did it, it’s becoming more acceptable to use foreclosures in calculating comparable properties, and one had sold on Dec. 31 for a low price that affected the second appraisal.
We figured there was no way in hell that FM would ever, EVER accept an addendum asking for the price to be dropped $30,000, but our realtor, bless her heart, basically said “What do you have to lose?” and drew up an addendum that asked for the lower price and also asked that the per diem ?fine? ($100/day, which was racking up quickly at this point) past the agreed upon closing date be waived.
And damned if they didn’t take it.
So, for the inconvenience of waiting a month (30 days, to be exact) in limbo while all of this was going on, we made $1000/day. We figured it had a lot to do with FM wanting to be done with this property; the moratorium on foreclosures was about to expire, and they were anticipating a slew of new foreclosures to come on the market shortly. We figure they just didn’t want to have this old listing remaining when the new foreclosures arrived.
We closed on Jan. 31, and my parents embarked on a whirlwind of renovation for a month. They were scheduled to leave for their annual trip to HI on Mar. 1, so they gutted and rebuilt the kitchen, upgraded the electrical wiring, installed canister lights in three rooms, refinished the beat-up wood floors, and painted most of the house in the space of 28 days. When they returned, my Dad re-sided the shed out back, put in new insulation in the attic, relocated the attic access ladder from the ceiling in the middle of the living room to the linen closet, installed exhaust fans in the bathroom and kitchen, finished up the canister lights, repaired a bit of roof (which will need to be replaced sooner than later), and oversaw the crawlspace project (removal of old, wet insulation, treatment of space for mold, reinstallation of new insulation). He also spackled…everywhere (there’s still dust on stuff) and just generally took care of everything we needed for Round One of the house improvement project.
There’s still stuff that needs to be done: the living room is still unpainted, and I’ll probably have to repaint at least part of the kitchen where I’ve left painter’s tape up for several months now. The linen closet also needs painting, pictures need to be hung, area rugs need to be bought, and window coverings are required in several rooms. But we have a house, the base mortgage payments (before taxes, etc.) are lower than the rent in our last house, and the kids each have a room. That last one is the best part.
