Friday Feature - Living in Limbo

First - in another clone moment, I'm at Elizabeth Spann Craig's blog, Mystery Writing is Murder, talking about writing, so be sure you get over there for the 'meaty' stuff. Since I'm talking writing there, it's going to be one of those "real life" posts here.

A slight change of pace this week. Sorry, but things have been crazy here. We signed a contract on our house. We're trying not to get too excited, because that's only the first step, and as our Realtor points out, we won't really know how it pans out until 10 minutes after we sign the closing papers. So, we're living in limbo. There are pictures, but not the usual sort.

We agreed on a price and signed and initialed a ream of papers. This afternoon, they buyers scheduled a house inspection. About an hour before they were due, two people showed up saying they were here to inspect and pump out the septic tank. Seems that was part of the inspection, although nobody bothered to tell us. Since the buyers ordered it, we let them at it.

The termite inspector showed up shortly thereafter, with the whole-house inspector on his heels. The buyers arrived, and a while later, so did their Realtor.

Mostly we sat around while the inspectors did their thing.



Bottom line: we have a few (very few, thank goodness) minor repairs to make.

But it's not over. It has to be appraised. Our county system says the bank submits the information to a pool of appraisers. Whoever's up next is charged with appraising the house. This means we could have an appraiser who is totally unfamiliar with our part of town. They rely primarily on comparable sales, and the rules are strict. (Yeah, I could tie it in to submission rules here, but sometimes it's about life, not writing, and besides, I'm talking writing over at Mystery Writing is Murder.)

Trouble is, there have been very few sales within the allotted time frame for the radius they're allowed to search, and even fewer that are "matches" for ours. They can't compare oranges to tangerines. Can't use a house with a pool because we don't have one. We're not in a gated community so they can't use those. Eventually (we hope) they arrive at a number that matches our selling price. Because that's it. Their word is final. If it's lower than the price we've agreed on with the buyers, we either walk or take that figure.

So, stress levels are high. We have to be ready to close within 30 days, but that's 30 days from the day we accepted the contract, and between now and then any one of a multitude of things could arise to negate the deal. So, we need to start culling "stuff" again, but have to be prepared to deal with the limbo factor.

So, this is the process:

Your house as seen by yourself:



Your house as seen by your buyer:



Your house as seen by your lender:



Your house as seen by your appraiser:



And, your house as seen by the county tax assessor:




Have a great weekend, everyone. See you Monday!