Those in contract --

How are you holding up and when is your tentative closing date?

We are waiting for the mortgage approval and then the house is getting appraised once we are approved. Since we are doing a seller's concession, the house must appraise for us to get the mortgage we need but they won't do the appraisal until we get approved. We should find out this week!

As per our contract, our closing date right now is October 31st!

Re: Those in contract --

Just a word of advice re: the appraisal, since you are getting a seller's concession:

Make sure that your realtor meets the appraiser and provides accurate comps. We are seeing more and more appraisers who are not local and are completely unfamiliar with the area in which the home is located. They don't know how to select true comps.

An agent in my office was just telling the story of how recently-- on one of her listings -- the appraiser showed up and he was from Westchester, not Long Island, and was brand new. He brought comps that were like $70-80K lower than the purchase price of the home at issue, AND the agent knew that the buyers needed a seller's concession. She was able to get the appraisal to come in high enough to allow for the seller's concession by providing her own comps and educating the appraiser about the area. But if she hadn't been there to meet him, it could have thrown a wrench in the entire deal.

It's really important for agents to be proactive when dealing with the appraisers, because they have a lot of control over the deal, and many of them are being forced to go into areas they just don't know well. A lot of agents will always make a point to go to the appraisal and provide their own comps to the appraiser, but it couldn't hurt to confirm with your agent.

Good luck!

Re: Those in contract --

I sign my contract Wednesday. Its bittersweet for me. Im supposed to be excited, and I am b/c its a new start, but my husband and I are separating so Im very sad too.

I wanted to do a sellers concession but they tell me now that they wont do that for short sales. So now I need to eat a lot of PB&J the next couple months. The closing date is November 15th so that means we can close December 15th??

Message edited 9/4/2011 9:17:33 PM.

Re: Those in contract --

We are doing the same exact thing you are doing re: sellers concession...our house luckily appraised for $30,000 more than we paid for it.

Our mortgage is basically done and the sellers want to move the closing date up 2 weeks...so we should be closing this month!!! It goes pretty fast at the end...good luck!