May 14, 2009

6:45 p.m.

Day-O!

What a stupendous, amazing, fortuitous day. I mean. The company pres likes me and is trying to find excuses to gimme more and more good work (i.e., prove to the owner that I'm valuable and they should keep me around). There was even a mention, Marc told me, of giving me a raise. Some of the huge boards I made right off the bat got tested and they're perfect. Today I started assembling another kit that's a microphone setup for the intercom system. My coworker made the boards, I tested them, Marc fixed little things that were amiss, and now I'm putting them together to send to the customer. I learned to do a few more wiring things with this one.

AND! I got my paycheck. They accidentally took tax out when I checked "exempt" on my W4, but she said she'd correct that by next time, so it'll be a little bigger. I got money!! I deposited money!

AND! I went back to Angela (Realtor of Perfection)'s contact, Sandi, the mortgage broker with whom I'd spoken once a few weeks ago, to ask if she could do an FHA loan, because a) my bank can't, and b) this process with my bank is aggravating, endless and confusing. Guess what? She can do the FHA (3.5% down payment, people, which is very wee indeed) AND, AND, I simply faxed her the one application we'd already filled out, and based on that she preapproved us in about two hours and I had the letter in my hand. Most amazing of all, we are preapproved for an amount way above anything we'd ever spend on this or any other property. Voila! You go to the right person and it gets DONE.

I asked her about her fees, closing costs etc. so I'd know what we were getting into if we decided to go with her. No surprises there, all still sounded good.

The loan officer at the bank is getting the boot. I'm going with the home team.

Meanwhile she can't do the kind of loan that comes with repair money. However, here's how Marc framed it. Say you get a fixer upper for $150,000. The bank has to do their appraisal. They normally do a drive by -- they don't go inside and poke around. This isn't accurate but it works in our favor, because they say, "Oh, nice; a big old Georgian house on almost 5 acres; this'll be worth $220,000." Boing. You've now got $70,000 of equity in the house already. And you can get a loan for up to $220,000, which can cover your repairs. Blah blah blah.

Anyway, in other news, I just spoke to Wes, who is suddenly moving to upstate New York on Tuesday. I'm sad. Several houses that he and his lady friend have bid on have fallen through. Now they're going to rent a place for a year instead. It's two and a half hours away. I won't see him for a long time, probably. I didn't expect him to move so soon.

I'm consoling myself with chocolate cake. I could eat really good chocolate cake until I black out.

But, all in all, a very faavorable day. And did I mention we got preapproved?????