Chateau Papillon, Here We Come!

Anyone who's kept up with this blog will know it's been a long, stressful summer as my wife and I have worked to buy the perfect home.  For the past three months--all visits to view "backup" homes aside--we've been waiting out a short sale.  That is, the sellers want (or in this case, need) to sell their home, but it's worth (significantly) less than the outstanding mortgage balance(s), and the bank must approve the "short" payoff of the loan as part of the sale.  That payoff is the only short thing about a short sale: our offer was in front of the bank for over three months.

Finally, this past week, we started to get good signs the sale might actually happen.  Technically, the listing agent had promised we'd have everything in writing over a week ago, and even took the sellers out looking for a rental home, but it wasn't until today that we got the official, ratified contract and short payoff approval from the bank.

(Long story there: Beth and I had done some courthouse sleuthing on the loan and property and found the originator had filed for Chapter 11 a couple of years back, but SEC filings for the mortgage lender showed the servicer... and though the listing agent would never share that with us, our sleuthing was indeed correct!)

So... we're moving forward to buying our first home together, which we've dubbed, appropriately, "Chateau Papillon."  Between our "deux Papillons adorable," Didi and Chance, I'm sure you can see the inspiration for the name.  Wish us luck as we go forward now; the only remaining snag could be if our loan appraisal comes in under the sales price (a real risk, given the falling market values in our area); if that's the case, we'll have to negotiate with the seller's bank for the lower purchase price--which might entail cutting the agents' commissions, something we don't want to see happen.