Ah, the challenges of historic preservation....
First, let me state here that I bought a historic house for a reason -- which is that I believe that we must know our past to comprehend our future. In other words, it's the right thing to do. But that doesn't mean it's the easy thing to do.
Case in point: I agreed, more or less, to buy the house a month ago. There have been many, many challenges in this process, which in the aggregate mean that I am now missing my original closing date. Thank God the guy who owned the house is generous and wants it sold and is willing to let my husband and animals and I not be homeless while we wait for it all to be resolved.
So, what's the issue? Well, I was buying a 125 year-old duplex which is in great structural condition, but less-than-ideal cosmetic condition. The previous owner had renovated roughly half of it to a great standard and was in the midst of renovating the other portion. This turned out to be a major issue as we got to the end of what should have been the pre-closing period.
I have great credit, and originally was guaranteed a 30-day closing. But we had trouble completing the inspection. Because of issues with the size of the house and the mechanical systems, the current owner had to pour $1,300 into a furnace and inspection took about a week. Due diligence was inspected. But hey, no problem -- the finish line was still in sight.
And then the appraisal came back, and it was both low and requiring repairs before closing. This is why we haven't closed already. Instead we're entertaining the appraiser on a return visit, having put $2,000 into drywall and wallpaper scraping.
What sucks about this, as well, is that in order to make this happen in an expedient manner we had to make a historically-inappropriate choice. Yes, we're drywalling. But that's only because we more or less have to. We're only doing what we absolutely have to do make the lender happy quickly enough to get this done.
Fingers crossed that it goes well.
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