Home buying is like gouging your own eyes out, cooking them over a fire, and then stuffing the charred remains of your eyes back into your eye sockets. At least that is how it feels after home inspection day.
A little about the home inspector: terrific guy, kind of cute in that home inspector way, and I couldn't help but flirt just a little. (Oh Mr. Home Inspector, you are so very smart! (to be said in your thickest southern accent while fanning yourself and sipping a cold beverage)). Kip would claim I flirted a lot, but Kip is a revisionist. I flirted only a little. Competence is so sexy, right? Plus he has this way of wearing the tool belt and wielding his screw driver...anyway, I digress.
It seems that there are several fatal flaws with the house I am looking at. The large fenced in lot, the nice view, the quiet street: those are not fatal flaws. The broken bathtub, the broken furnace, the non-existent hot water heater, and the missing stove: those are all problems for qualifying for an FHA mortgage. Who knew that the government cared whether or not I had heat? They don't care if I have air conditioning, which is odd since I live in the desert. They do, however, want me to be toasty warm all winter long. Also, the cash outlay to actually fix the furnace, etc... is a tad prohibitive considering that I am not made of money. The irony is that the very company I am getting the mortgage from, Fannie Mae, is the same company that is SELLING the foreclosured home. They know what the house needs in order to qualify for the very loan they are pimping out to the first-time home buyer.
I have until Friday to go back to Fannie May to request some repairs or a credit on the house, but unless they do the work, a credit on the house only means cheaper mortgage, not cash in hand to install a heat pump. The other problems are mostly cosmetic and cheap/easy to fix. The heat pump is the opposite of cheap and easy but it would make Allison one very happy girl, especially as I am enjoying my new temperature-controlled home over a candlelight dinner with Mr. Home Inspector.
Ugh, the process DOES suck. My understanding is that FHA does not make it easier if you are buying a fixer.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's a good thing you're not made of money, because then you would be all gone before you knew it!
Thank goodness for those bright spots like Mr. Home Inspector.
I'm too brain dead to make a funny quip about his screwdriver, but the intention was there.
ReplyDeleteI work across the street from the Fannie Mae headquarters, which seems to be an oversized replica of the Governor's Palace in Colonial Williamsburg. Let me know if you want me to go kick some ass or something.