CONFESSIONS PART V: THE RECOMPUTATIONING

As those who pay any attention to the pearls of wisdom that I regularly excrete onto Facebook know, our Appraisal came through this past week. I've been pretty coy about stating explicitly how much the house is costing us, and I see no reason to discontinue that mealy-mouthed policy. Suffice to say, the appraised value was pretty darn close to what we had contracted to pay for it.

Kind of.

Let's say that the selling price of the house was X. As I think I previously mentioned, the seller had agreed to roll $7K of closing costs into the purchase price: they would front the money, and we'd pay them back through the purchase price of the house. And so the total contract was for X+7K.

The appraised value came in at X+3K. So in one sense, we were purchasing the house for $3K less than it was objectively worth. A good thing, right? Not so much, it seems. Friday evening, we get a call from our broker, Lorri - several calls, actually. She had sent us an addendum to the contract but her e-mail was acting up and so we weren't even aware that anything required our signatures. I talked to her after 10 pm and we agreed that if by the following morning she was still having trouble with the mail, we'd make arrangements to meet and sign a hardcopy (UGH -- stupid meatspace protocols!).

By the following morning, there was a copy in my inbox, so there was no need to meet. Accompanying the addendum was reminder stressing the urgency to get this signed and back. Essentially, it stated that the contract price had been dropped to X+3K in keeping with the appraisal. So the seller isn't covering as much of the closing costs as before, but the loan's reduced. Great! Yay!

Except that's NOT great. We WANTED the closing fees & prepaids rolled so we could minimize our out-of-pocket expenses. Before, we only had to bring less than 2 grand to the closing table; now that number's jumped to around 6 grand, and that's going to hurt. Like, big-time hurt. We are not happy campers to say the least. The terms of the contract turned in a direction that was decidedly not in our favor, and I must confess: more fool me for allowing us to be pressurized to sign without exploring all the ramifications. I was concentrating on the "reduced loan" angle, and lost sight of the "cough up" factor. The seller is only covering 3K of closing costs, so now I'm probably going to have to take out a loan against my 401k. I contacted our mortgage guy, and he's confirmed that we can do that without affecting the loan terms. Prefer not to do it, of course, but at least it's doable. Still not happy, though, and I'll be telling Lorri about it, you bet.

While that's been happening, we've been trying to get insurance quotes. We'll need to get a Letter of Bondage or something like that to bring to closing. I've contacted a couple of insurance agents for quotes. I started with Geico - we've got our car and renters' insurance through them, so why not house insurance, hmm? Spoke to a very nice lady in Virginia who sounded honest-to-God disappointed when she reported back that none of the underwriters they deal with would carry our policy: they've covered the maximum number of homes in the area that they wish to carry, in an effort to limit their liability. So no go there. Another agent I called played phone tag with me a couple of times, but never followed up with an actual quote. Boo. There's still another couple of agents to go, so we're not stalled on that front, though.

And that's how things stand, then. Our closing date is coming up fast; hopefully we'll get everything sorted out in time. And through it all, constant reader, you'll be by my side, sharing the laughter and the tears, not to mention the blood and the sweat. Yeah, ok, that was kind of gross. Sorry.