A Glimmer?

It’s been a month or so since my last post, and there is no change in status.  The new bank we’ve submitted to is looking over our information, and we know by now that banks don’t move fast. However, this (absolutely, positively final) bank, Texas Loan Star, has given us a glimmer of hope for financing, as foolish as that might sound…

The first step is always going to be the appraisal of the home and land.  This will be the hardest part, but the bank looked at the past appraisal and they told us that the appraiser didn’t do a thorough job–he listed our container home as a “ranch” with “concrete walls.”  Yeah, that’s not right, and I’m embarrassed for not catching that myself, but appraisals aren’t my specialty.  Texas Loan Star says we need to compare our home to other metal construction in the area, and that it needs to be free-standing (not the attached metal townhouses you see everywhere in this town).  This might be difficult, but there are some out there.  So far, Texas Loan Star seems to be more on top of appraisals and what is required than BBVA was.

If the house can appraise, Texas Loan Star recommends a 15 year mortgage, rather than 30.  They are pushing this because they have only two plans for mortgages: a 5 year (which is then sold to another bank and reappraised for refinancing a 30 year mortgage) or the 15 year (they handle this mortgage, so no other appraisals for other banks will be necessary).  Besides the awesome thought of paying off our house in 15 years, we won’t have to go through this appraisal nightmare again.  This is positive because we won’t get in a bind if another bank feels the same way BBVA does about alternative methods of construction.  Because we own the lot, paying off the house in 15 years won’t be much more than what we would have spent on monthly payments on any house we purchased out there with a 30 year mortgage.

Years back, I said that I never wanted to live somewhere more than ten years, but we’ve been in our current place for over 12, so I think I could handle 15 years in a brand new home.  After 15 years, we could keep living there on the cheap, or we could consider selling.  If we were to sell, we would have to consider the problem above about a bank possibly not funding the buyers…but maybe in 15 years banks will catch up with the times and embrace it.  We could also consider keeping the house as a rental.  I think lots of people would want to rent an unusual home, and the upkeep as landlords on this kind of home would be minimal.

It’s hard to talk this way after all the disappointment we’ve experienced so far, but I’m always trying to remind myself of this blog’s title.  While this experience of trying to move out of our old house and build anew has been nearly impossible, it’s still just a rock n roll problem.  We still have a roof over our heads, albeit one we don’t want. More importantly, we still have one another; we have our health; we have jobs; we have our loved ones. There’s a way out of this mess, and a glimmer of hope is a start.