A Pain in the Roof

Who knew a roof could be such a pain when it comes to purchasing a house?! Unfortunately, both the home inspector and the roofing contractor said that it was almost an immediate need. We hope the bank's appraiser disagrees, but that is highly unlikely. We have basically narrowed our options down to two scenarios and are hoping that the seller agrees to them.

The best-case scenario is that we get the bank's appraisal done by the end of the month and it comes back without any exceptions for the roof. Then we will get approved for our loan which will probably take right up until closing. Once that's done, we can close. If we're lucky, that could still be done by Memorial weekend. If this happens, we will request that the seller pay for our settlement charges (closing costs and prepaid items) to free up some cash for our immediate roof repair.

The much more likely scenario is that again we get the bank's appraisal back by the end of the month but this time it comes back subject to a roof repair. We would ask the seller to pay for half of the repair and the repair would be done prior to closing. We would have to wait until the bank approved our loan (which again would be close to Memorial Day) prior to starting on the roof work. So here we would be looking at closing hopefully sometime in June depending on how quickly we can get the roof done.

Once we get that all straightened out, we will have to make sure our insurance company will insure the house. Our agent has told us that most likely we will have 60 days after closing to get the roof repaired (assuming we don't have it done prior to closing).