Today was crazy. CRAZY.
Home Inspection
This morning we headed over to the house for the home inspection. Our home inspector, Scott, took us through the entire house and patiently explained every part of the inspection. The amount of information was overwhelming, but will be included in his home inspection report, so we didn’t have to worry too much about remembering everything.
Here’s Alex checking out some moisture issues at the window:
There were no major surprises. He pointed out the major issues (knob and tube, a questionable porch and garage, some DIY plumbing that we might want to replace, etc.). The best part was that he clearly identified what we would want to do first and gave us two very useful tips:
- Major renovation projects always start with a simple: “I’m just gonna…”
- It’s always best to fix the cause, not the symptom.
Preparing for the Appraisal
After the home inspection we had to strategize about what would happen today (re appraisal). Three things could have happened:
- The appraisal could come back at the purchase price (yay!)
- The appraisal could come back lower than the purchase price (ah, crap)
- The appraisal could not come back at all (also ah, crap)
Based on the above, we would either waive our conditions and the house would be ours, present a mutual release which would allow us to walk away from the offer, or present an amendment to the offer that would buy us some time until Monday. We signed each document so that we could send whichever one we needed…
We then parted ways with Arthur and headed back to work. It was a long afternoon.
The Appraisal
At 5pm we still had no news. None. Well, we had news that they were working on it and would let us know by 6. So Alex and I headed home from work in a slight panic.
At 6pm our mortgage lender texted me to say she was on the phone with the appraiser. So we waited some more.
Several minutes passed. Several. At around 6:40 we convinced ourselves that this wouldn’t be good news. At 6:45, we finally got a call. We had verbal confirmation from the appraiser that the house appraised. Yay – sort of. We still didn’t have written confirmation from either the appraiser or the bank. We hung up the phone around 7pm and had to decide what to do.
The other fun add-on to this drama was that Arthur (our realtor) was about to board a plane to Vancouver. While we were waiting for the news, he called the selling agent to suggest an amendment to the offer that would buy us some time until Monday. The seller wanted nothing to do with it. We were either buying this house tonight or walking away.
Our last conversation with him was just after we got news of the appraisal and he suggested that we go for it. The worst case scenario at this point is that the bank doesn’t agree with the appraisal or that the appraiser was lying – both extremely unlikely events.
And it happens…
So at around 8pm, Alex and I decided to send our waived conditions document to our stand-in realtor. This would waive our conditions, thus confirming our offer.
The house is ours!!!
Now we’re going out. To drink. A lot.