Delays

Well, our pre-designated close date on the new place has come and gone.  We were supposed to close on the 15th and come to find out that there was something wrong on the application.  We just got the appraisal back from the bank and they said that the house is not worth as much as the owner wants to sell it for.  He wants to sell it to us for $190K and it is only worth $183K so they will not loan us the money unless he drops the price.  Hopefully he will concede and drop the price for us since we have pushed it this far. Apparently when the whole process started, he assumed that the house was his after his mother died and did not do any paperwork to get it transferred into his name.  So he had to go through the process of finding a will or whatever the process is in order to transfer it to him before he can sell it.  Then the tax records and the title company have the land plotted differently so they had to hammer out the details.  The tax record had it listed as one plot with 5.7 acres and 2 dwellings on it.  The title company had it listed as 1 dwelling with 3.7 acres.  I would not have minded them giving us the whole mess for the same price, but I understand.  We ultimately want to purchase his 2 acres and the other dwelling from him to put storage units on, but we do not have the money to do that now. 

I am getting a little anxious to get things rolling.  I have a garage full of boxes that I would like to start moving down there and we just had our tile and carpet cleaned.  Emma has been doing a lot of work painting the house and fixing it up so we can get it on the market.  I think we are close, we just need to get all this stuff out of here.  I think we are taking the chickens to a friends house while we make the transition.  Not sure what we are going to do with our compost piles and garden.  Emma was talking about just taking the sides off the garden and spreading the dirt out over the lawn.  I was thinking of just transferring the compost to the flower beds and covering it up with mulch.  We may just leave them and let the new home owners deal with it though.  Since we are doing owner financing, we have a few more options. 

We are having an architect come down and look over the place today.  We want to add another room, a bathroom, an extension on the back of the house, remove the fireplace, redo the kitchen, build a room, bathroom, and pantry in the garage, and put a deck on the back of the house.  Emma and I cannot agree on how to do this so she is asking the architect to do it for us.  I mean come on, how much more creative can he be than we are?  I guess he will know the structural limitations as well so will save us some headaches during the building process.  The biggest stumbling block we have to face is were to begin.  I know we want to rip out the carpets and what is left of the vinyl tile, but we do not want to put new floors in until we move some walls and plumbing around.  If we tear out the back wall of the house, the things will get a bit drafty, but it would allow us to home the wall where we want them.  We would also want to do that when the weather is cooler.  Hopefully the magic architect will have some ideas for us.  Will update when I hear back from him.