If you’ve been following the drama of The Red Garage House, you know that it’s been under contract now for exactly two months. And about half that time has been spent in underwriting, trying to get FHA financing approval for the buyer.
As of the end of last week, we were fairly certain this wouldn’t pass underwriting, and we put the property back on the market (the contract with the buyer had expired). But, then we received a surprise phone call from the mortgage broker yesterday, indicating that nearly every hurdle had been cleared for financing approval, with the exception of a second appraisal.
With FHA financing, if the property is selling for more than twice what it was purchased for, two appraisals are often required. This broker told us that they should be able to get around the second appraisal requirement, but we were fairly certain that it would be necessary, and have been waiting for the broker to come to this conclusion as well. And apparently he finally did…at the very end of the process…
On the bright side, the broker allowed us to pick our appraiser from an approved list, so we had some control over that. We used a woman who was recommended to us by another investor, and she stopped by today to do her appraisal inspection, and hopefully she’ll have the actual appraisal completed and submitted to the lender by Thursday.
I’m still skeptical that we’ll close with this buyer — with so many roadblocks, I’m trying not to get my hopes up — but supposedly this is the last big hurdle we need to face, so perhaps we’ll be pleasantly surprised and get the clear to close sometime soon.
I’ll keep you updated…
Funny how things work out sometimes. It would be great if they kept you up to date and informed instead of leaving you hanging.
Just one more dune to go….
Hope it closes.