Under Contract!!!

After a bit of negotiation, we have officially gone under contract for our house.  We are now waiting for the inspection, which has been scheduled in a couple days, and also for their FHA appraisal.

We were a bit leery to accept the offer in the beginning because of some of the stories that we'd heard concerning FHA appraisers, who can be very nit-picky at times.  If you're not familiar, FHA is federal insurance on a mortgage.  FHA looks out for themselves by making sure that the house appraises for the price that the buyer has agreed to pay, and as I said, can be super nit-picky.  The biggest issue is that FHA requires that anything they say needs to be done (like paint chipping on the exterior or interior) has to be completed before settlement for them to go through with the loan, unlike with a conventional mortgage, where items can be negotiated, and money can be given at the settlement table for items to be completed.  We can still negotiate the items with the buyer as to who pays for what, but in the end, it still must be completed before settlement

In the end, we decided to accept the offer because if FHA comes back with a long list of items, we can either say, we'll pay for a couple, and they can pay for some, or there's too much that FHA says needs to be done, and the deal can be done.  We're hoping that there won't be much, if anything that needs to be done.  So now we must wait for inspection to be done, and for the appraisal to be set up.  We are supposed to have the completed mortgage package by next Friday, which would be awesome because then we'd be able to put in an offer on a house.  Until we're in the "waiting for settlement" stage, we're stuck "looking but not touching" houses on the market.  

We're even more anxious now, because a house just went on the market, and we went to see it yesterday.  Both my husband and I got that "I'm home" feeling from it.  It had a gorgeous property, a nice big driveway, a big garage, and plenty of space for us to live in!  The best part is, it's a vacant property, and if all goes well with inspections, we'll be going to settlement on our house in the beginning of September, so we could potentially get a settlement date right around ours to move into this house!  So fingers crossed that everything works out for us :-)