It Takes a Village
I am please to report we have closed on our dream property and have a home in Palisade! Palisade Posh is now located in Palisade, Colorado. After the last closing delay that inspired the blog post on Resilience, we were finally able to nail down a date and close. There was however on last unanticipated roadblock before we reached that finish line. It literally took a “Village” of wonderful people to make it happen. We owe it all to Laura Black, our amazing realtor, who moved mountains for us! I highly recommend her if you are ever in need of a realtor in Palisade or the Grand Valley.
The Bomb Shell
Three days before we were set to close the loan underwriter whom we’d been working with for the last eight months blindsided us, our realtor and even the bank we were working with! At the last minute this person informed us they would need a parcel number from the county before they could continue processing the loan. Despite having every opportunity over the last eight months to let us know this information would be needed, this was the first we had heard of it and was a real brain scratcher. Laura has sold subdivided properties prior to ours and they never need a parcel number to complete the transaction. Until now, all that was required was a description of the property and proof that the subdivision was complete. We had both documents. When the bank people reached out to the county, they were told that the parcel number paperwork would take six to seven weeks to complete. This in turn meant that we wouldn’t be able to close for another month and a half or more!
Even the most ‘resilient’ person would have a hard time swallowing that piece of news! The thought of having to commute for another seven weeks was soul crushing to say the least. After processing this piece of news, Andy and I decided it was time to part ways with this lender and more importantly this underwriter, clearly the writer was not on our team. This is when Laura sprang into action. She reached out to a private lender, who also happened to be her neighbor and shared our situation. Her neighbor, our future neighbor, came to the rescue in the form of a bridge loan! With this game plan secured, we were back on track to close and we did on Tuesday, September 12th at noon. With the papers signed and keys in hand we moved into our new Palisade home!
The Village Grows
As bridge loans are only temporary fixes, we are now working with a new lender to refinance the house and transition the bridge loan into a traditional 30-year fixed loan with stable monthly mortgage payments. Like Laura, our new lenders are using all their resources and contacts to make this happen as smoothly and uneventful as possible. The appraiser, the same one as before, is revisiting the house to reappraise it… I spoke with him when he called to schedule and I’m hopeful that the house will hold its value or perhaps even increase in value since the last appraisal, especially as we have been working on cleaning up the property. We’ve also moved our possessions in which will aid in the overall presentation of the home. He noted that we can use the sale of the house to us as one of the comparable comps which will also work to our advantage as it is a recent sale. In a nutshell, it feels like he is on team Putnam and is yet another member of our village. Our new lenders also have contacts within the county whom they have been working with closely and I’m please to report that we now have an official parcel number for our property! Our refinance closing date is tentatively scheduled for October 16th.
Once we complete the refinance and sign off on that paperwork, we will begin the next step in the Palisade Posh dream and start meeting with builders, remodelers, and interior designers. The builders and interior designers are for the construction of the future Airbnb, aka Posh Cottage. The remodelers are for the renovation of the main house to turn it into our forever home. These new people will in turn become part of our village, a beautiful team of diverse people that work together with us to make Palisade Posh and our dream of retiring in Palisade a reality!
