Holy Cow!

There is so much gloom and doom in the news these days, that Joe and I were nervous about our ability to get our house refinanced. When we bought it in the fall of 2007, we were one of the last people to take advantage of a 100% loan, as we knew our house would need some improvements and wanted to save as much cash as possible for them. Well, in the process we ended up with 75%/25% loans, at just under 7% (the going rate at the time). W

Over the past year, the values of the homes in our neighborhood have fallen about 4%. We've spent a good deal of money over the past year and a half, replacing the roof, new landscaping, new paint, new windows, new lighting, new screened porch and now a brand new kitchen. We were hoping that a gamble in putting money into the house would increase our equity, over pouring more money into mortgage payments. So Monday, we continued the refi process, now that the kitchen is finished. The appraiser came out, and in half an hour was done. I've been even more nervous to find out the results. I've been reassuring myself that even if we don't see a good return on our money for the kitchen, we're so much happier and down the road when the market picks back up, it'll be worth it.

Well, this morning, I got the email from the bank, telling us that the appraisal came in much higher than we expected! We've added $30,000 in value to the home since we bought it in Sep. 2007, and only put about $12,000 of cash into the house. We are so incredibly excited that in this bad housing market, so far we've made some positive changes! Now we're rushing to put the rest of the paperwork in place so we can refi at about 5% and use the equity as our down payment. Hooray! Fingers crossed now that everything with the refi goes smoothly at this point.