Our Old House

Buying a house hasn’t been as stressful as I imagined it’d be, but I am preparing myself for disappointment. There have been a few hiccups, including the one that is dragging on right now. The sellers accepted our offer for the fixer upper near my parents’ house. Yay! The inspection report came back like we thought (lots of issues and repairs), so no shocker there. We managed to find an insurance company with a decent price.

Then, we had the appraisal. I was shocked to see that it came in lower than the purchase price because we’re getting a great deal on the house! I think it’s because it needs a lot of repairs and there aren’t any appliances or updates (the appraiser said it looks like the house hasn’t had many updates since it was built – 63 years ago!). We’re actually purchasing the house for land value only.

We went back to the seller and asked them to lower the price to meet the appraised value. The bank won’t loan any more money than what the appraisal says the house is worth. With the required down payment, in order to buy the house at the current price, we’d have to save thousands of more dollars – all within 20 days. I don’t think that’s possible.

We haven’t heard back from the seller about their decision to meet the appraisal price, but I’m crossing my fingers that they say yes. If they don’t, it’s a really big chance we may be saying goodbye to the house and our dreams of living in that area.

As upset as I would be, there’s really not much we could do about the situation. We’d have to just move on and find another house.

Keep your fingers crossed for us! We really want this house!