Time to throw in the towel?

After much haggling with the bank and going over and over our appraisal, we wonder if it is just time to throw in the towel.  Our house did not appraise for what we thought it would.  The first reason being the location and site value of the home.  The second reason is the bank does not want to pour money into a house, especially an old house, due to the current housing market, if they don’t feel they could resell it for what was put into it.  There are too many houses on the market here.

Initially, we only wanted to hire a contractor to rebuild the turret and replace some of the fascia boards and paint.  We pretty much could handle the rest ourselves.  However, when we laid it out for the bank, they told us we would have to add projects X, Y, and Z in order for them to feel that we are adding worth to our house.  So, we reluctantly added X,Y,Z all the while working with our contractor and letting him know that we plan on doing X,Y,Z ourselves and just don’t tell the bank.  Now that our house has come in undervalued, we have to cut the general contractor’s jobs.  But, in order to get the loan we need a general contractor!  ARGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  It is a huge vicious cycle!

In analyzing our appraisal, there are just not enough houses in the area that compare to ours.  The appraiser had a hard time finding some comps.  We are faced with making the decision of: 1) getting another appraisal; 2) finding our own comps; 3) scrapping the whole deal.  I have talked to a realtor friend and a respected appraiser, they both say that there aren’t any other comps out there and getting another appraisal would be throwing good money after bad.  No wonder people don’t fix up old houses!  LOL!  You have to have enough cash to do it all yourself, or have enough cash to hire it out.  Either way, you must be rich and have tons of money stashed away ready to be poured into these mammoth houses.  The sad part is, most people don’t have enough cash to fix these old historic homes up.  If they had the cash, they probably are living in a McMansion up the street in the “new neighborhood development”. 

Due to the very poor past maintenance of this house and lack of preventive maintenance achieved, it is in very poor condition and a LOT of things need to be replaced immediately, i.e. Roof (leaking and you can see daylight in one spot), plumbing (everything on one side of the house gurgles because there is no vent stack), porch (we currently have plywood holding it up), fence (it is leaning into the neighbor’s yard!).

We have redone three houses, but nothing of this magnitude.  We have been able to choose one project at a time and pay cash for it.  We can do a lot of the work ourselves, but we cannot do it all at once.  I am afraid that by the time we save enough cash to move on to the next project, we will have the other side of the house falling apart!   Ahhh….old houses, gotta love them!

What we immediately need to do is get the roof water tight.  It is leaking, needs carpentry work and a new roof altogether.  The last one was put on in 1948.  It is a good roof, and may last longer, but it is very brittle and once the tiles are moved to repair the leaks, they probably will be too broken up to put back.  So, therefore it was suggested we replace the roof in its entirety. 

Sigh…..I am starting to wonder if I should have listened to the realtor, loan officer, family and friends that I blogged about in my first post!  LOL!  Please, someone, anyone, are you out there?  What do I do now?