Thank you, Radmakers

The Radmakers have lived up to their name through this mortgage and appraisal fiasco that threatened to unravel the purchase of our house. As I wrote about in our last post, the appraisal came in very low (~30K low of the purchase price) and no one thought it was fair since the house had 5 offers and we weren't even the highest offer. Our realtor and their realtor thought the appraiser used really bad 'comps' (short for comparable home sales) that aren't truly reflective of our house. For instance, they used a house on a really busy street and didn't adjust the price accordingly as their supposed to. All sorts of really weird things. We felt horrible for the Radmakers because we really, really like them and want them to get all they can for the house since living in these retirement communities isn't exactly cheap. However, Paula and I don't sit on a pot of gold that can cover that kind of shortfall.

In the end, we had to let the Radmakers know that the appraisal came in really low and we did everything that we could to get it higher (our broker had it reevaluated up, but still $15K short of the purchase price). So, the Radmakers came down on their asking price but we had to come up with an bit more queso. While it's stretching us a bit further than we'd like, we can make it happen and are thankful for a fair couple to work with.

The moral of the story is that we're back on track and are set to close NEXT THURSDAY! We won't technically move in for a little while after that since we gave them 10 days to move (they've lived there 50+ years and have a lot of cleaning and packing to do) and we may pull up the carpet and have the oak floors refinished before we move in. It looks like we'll be moving in late July to early August (sorry Merry, you can't get rid of us that quickly).

We're both really excited. Granted, I'm a bit more excited since Paula's really nervous right now about both being in so much debt (do they sell organic top ramen?) and at having to start on-call in the wards at Children's on Thursday. So, if you've got a sick kid admitted to Childrens some time during the 30 hours that Paula's there on Thursday and Friday morning, say hi to her.

That's all for now.