Oh boy Oh boy Oh boy! Thank you Thank you Thank you!
See, when we first started talking to the mortgage person, she said there would be no downpayment. Then she said, guess what, someone with a comparable house and piece of land in your neighborhood appraised much lower than we anticipated, so you may need to come up with a $5,000 downpayment. And we said, but we don’t have $5,000! And she said, can’t you borrow it from someone? And we said, yeah, right, our friends and family are so rich, they have $5,000 just laying around to give to us. So we went home to sulk for a while.
A year later, I decide I’m really sick of paying property taxes. I decide I’m really sick of the damn landlord and his attorney calling if we’re a week late paying the property taxes. I decide I’m just really, really sick. And I get an offer in the mail for a loan–I’m preapproved for up to $6,000. All I have to do is write myself a check. So I pick up the phone.
Of course I find out you can’t make a downpayment with a loan. So I come up with a scheme to make a check out to my mom to deposit in her account, so she can write a check back to me, et voile, there’s our generous relative!
But it turns out to be unnecessary. We get back in touch with the mortgage person and our house and land are appraised. Turns out they are worth more than the mortgage person had figured the year before! So she says we just need to come up with $2,000. Yay, we don’t have to borrow as much money!
Then we get a call from the title company. She says come on down and sign some papers. I said, how much money do we need to bring. She says none! We got a lower interest rate than the mortgage lady had figured! Wow, the mortgage lady sure has a problem with figures! Wish we hadn’t been so scared off by the huge downpayment a year ago, we could have gotten this all taken care of a long time ago!
But it will be over and done with Tuesday. We do have to bring in $250, because it turns out the Title company person forgot to include the fee to the mortgage company in her original figures (and the mortgage person has been so gall-danged helpful, I’d sure hate to forget to pay her!)
Heaves sigh of relief
And, as stated before, our payments are going to go down. Our interest rate will go from 12.5% to 7.25%. We will go from making 4 payments per month ($788 for the house, $205 for the rent, $40+ for insurance, and $76 for property taxes) to one payment of $928. It may not be a huge savings, but it feels like a better investment. Owning a house without the land has been a bitch.
So there. I hope that wasn’t too tedious. Thank you for humoring me, Cajun Man, you made my night! 
