Appraisal and the long days after......

About a week and a half ago we had our appraisal.  We've been pretty involved in the process every step of the way.  This step was a little strange because we did not actually visit the house with the appraiser.  I did not know this until it was scheduled.  I was a little relieved to not have to go I finally got a work from home day where I could actually stay in my jammies because I didn't need to run over to the house for an hour to meet someone.  I was a little nervous about the appraisal.  In order to continue with the process the house needed to have an after improvement value that is higher than the loan amount we are taking out.  The amount of work we are doing is a bit more than we thought it was going to be, so I was convinced it would not appraise high enough.  

WELL, IT DID!!!

We didn't expect to hear back from the appraiser until a couple days after he visited the house.  He actually submitted the report the next day and we were ready to roll forward.  The next step was to submit the appraisal to an appraisal underwriter for review. 

This is where things got a little sticky.  When we learned about the foundation issues with the house we brought out a structural engineer and a contractor.  The structural engineer told us that we have an issue and described the fix.  He also wrote a report that stated we needed to hire a structural engineer to create drawings for the the design of the basement fix.  When we brought out the contractor he said the fix was pretty standard and that we didn't need to get the drawings, they knew what to do and quoted the repair.  Since he said we didn't need the drawings we didn't think much more of it until the Friday before Memorial Day at 4:15.  Yes, the Friday before a three day weekend, when it was too late to contact anyone, we got an email from the mortgage broker saying that the appraiser wants a drawing since it was recommended in the report.  

We spent most of the weekend feeling very frustrated with the predicament we were in.  The contractor didn't need the drawings and now we were being forced to drop a little more cash to have someone draw up a design.  By Tuesday we knew we had to act fast.  Greg called an engineer first thing in the morning and set him up to come out the next day to look at the house, give us a second assessment (for peace of mind) and put together the drawings.  

Joy and I met the second engineer at the house and we liked him much more than the first guy we met.  He was an ND fan so we chatted up the latest developments with the ND football team and then he took at a look at the basement.  He agreed with the initial assessment and the repair and took measurements to do the drawings.  He said he would get them to us Thursday or Friday.  Well, late Friday afternoon rolled around and we still didn't have them.  Greg gave him a call and he said he would get them to us over the weekend.  We were disappointed with the delay but hoping it would not impact our closing date.  He got the drawing to us early Monday morning and we sent them over to the foundation contractor to review to make sure there were no adjustments in the price, thankfully not.  We heard back from the mortgage broker later in the afternoon and the appraisal was officially approved by the appraisal underwriter.  

At this point we are not sure if we are still on track to close next Thursday.  We e-mailed the broker today to ask if we are on track and we are waiting to hear back.  We are hoping we are still on track because we have other news in the hopper that can't be shared until we close!