Blue Skies

Didja miss me? :)

I've been off for a few days, in a swirl of cleaning and quickie repairs because the County People came today to do the appraisal of this house and explain what we are entitled to in our relocation. I have been so nervous, thinking about all the 'what if's and imagining the various scenarios that I really haven't been able to sit still long enough to blog or anything else until I've basically fallen into bed at night. The cabinets are bare, but at least they're clean, dammit!

Also, demolition has begun. We live next door to a small bank, on a corner, and the house around the corner, on the other side of said bank, was purchased by the bank to be turned into a new parking lot, since the county is taking the one they currently have. Three days ago, when I brought Patrick to school, there was a house there, and when I brought him home (I stayed out doing errands while he was there) all that was left was a pile of toothpicks. That house was as old as ours, and nothing had been salvaged out of it but the windows, which we saw them take the other day. What a waste. It was pretty unnerving, seeing this happen, and knowing that that's exactly what's to become of our place sooner or later.

On to the good part! The three people who came today were VERY nice, and made it clear that we're gonna be OK. What they said boils down to:

1) They will pay off our mortgage regardless of the appraisal because they need to own the house free and clear, so if the appraisal is low because of the current market, it's not a worry. If it's more than we owe, we'll get the difference.
2) They will work with the bank to ensure we get the same interest rate that we currently have on this house, which is nice since it's lower than what's out there now.
3) They will not only move us, but have the movers pack everything for us, including our big playset out back. This is HUGE, because since we only moved here eighteen months ago, I was NOT looking forward to re-packing everything!!!
4) They assured me that everything in the house, like the original woodwork and big, beautiful banister, will be salvaged rather than wasted.

Also, the appraiser was a really nice older man who made sure to tip everything in our favor, such as he referred to our basement as finished, even though it technically is only finish-ready, and called our kitchen upgraded because I did a lot of tile work in there. At the end of the interview, I gave him some papers I had printed out detailing properties the same size and age as ours that have sold in the past six months for more than what we currently owe (anyone can look up property and ownership information through their state Dept of Assessments and Taxation website, and it's really interesting!), and he said that he could use them, so hopefully that will help us as well.

It was such a relief to hear that we're going to be OK, and not stuck with trying to explain to a mortgage company why we had a loan on one house that we needed to roll into a new home loan! That's what's really been keeping me up nights, I'll tell you. I was honestly surprised at how nice the people were, too, because with the county we lived in before this, if something similar had happened, I swear they would have probably just burned our house down while we were out one day!

So, at the moment, I'm pretty elated. Not only did we not get bad news, we actually had a good experience! Now my only concern is that we haven't heard from the seller/his bank yet with an acceptance of our offer. I'm trying to be patient on that one.