appraise you

[music to accompany this post; will open in new page]

Got good news from the banker last Friday: The house appraised out for the loan! {wh00p! wh00p!} And the appraisal (all 43 pages of it) came in for much better than we had feared. We weren't concerned about the loan because we're bringing so much land equity (the lot is paid off) and cash to the table (all the equity from the house we sold plus some savings) that having the loan make at least 80 percent of the final property value was going to be a piece of cake. However, we were concerned about how much of a financial blunder we were making by building a house (if you're simply looking for a place to live, building a custom home is not the most cost effective approach). One of the ten common custom home mistakes noted by the Dummies people is thinking the house will be worth what it costs. So we were prepared.

And what did that darn appraiser say? He valued the finished product at 91 to 104 percent of what it will cost for us to build the house, soft costs included. Split the difference, and that's 97.5 percent. That's way better than we thought, especially since the budget is pretty tricked out with various geegaws (I was predicting 80 percent). That was a great way to start the weekend (especially after that food poisoning I got from eating healthy).

The housing market is pretty hot right now in Austin. Rental vacancies are low which has led to high rents which has led to demand in the home ownership sector. And people keep moving to town (they musta heard about the TexMex...).

Big smile.