JUST SOLD! Updated Historic Ogden Cottage
Published On: November 3, 2016 Posted by: Jeremy Peterson
I just closed on the sale of this beautiful historic cottage located in downtown Ogden. We originally listed this property for sale in early June for $135,000. Within days we had four offers with the highest being $150,000. My sellers and I felt that the highest offer would probably not past muster with an appraiser so we picked the second highest bid of $142,000. The home went under contract and we proceeded with the sale.
Unfortunately, the offer we accepted was contingent on the buyers selling their home and they were having problems getting an offer on it. So, after several weeks, we disengaged from that offer and went back to our previous bidders to see if they were still interested. The good news was that the buyer that bid $150k was still interested in the home. We renegotiated a price of $142,000 and agreed to pay $4260 in closing costs for the buyer.
That is when things started to get interesting. We expected to close in late July once we had signed the contract with the buyer. However, problems with financing began to surface. First, the buyer’s lender did not retrieve the FHA case number from the lender of the first buyer. We found out over two weeks into the transaction that the buyer’s lender hadn’t gotten it. We called the original lender and they get the ball rolling to transfer the number. A couple more weeks passed. Then the appraisal was ordered.
By late July, we finally got the appraisal back with some bad news. The home appraised for $137,000, lower than the contract price. The appraiser also disqualified the home for an FHA loan due to a neighbors service line which ran above the airspace of the roof of this property. The intrusion was a mere 18 inches and was due to a power pole that had tipped a little bit in one direction due to canyon winds. Nevertheless, the appraiser didn’t budge. I gave Rocky Mountain Power a call and they wrote us a letter indicating the condition was safe. We lowered the contract price submitted utility information to the lender thinking we had solved the problem. But the lender didn’t respond for a couple weeks. Finally in mid August, the lender admitted that FHA, the appraiser, and the underwriter weren’t going to approve the FHA loan. 
This event left us in the lurch. We then determined that we needed to switch to a conventional loan. The lender got to work and we gave him a couple more weeks to get things resolved. Another month passed. By late September it was apparent that the lender wasn’t getting anything done. He hadn’t even ordered a new appraisal. So, the buyer pulled his file and gave it to another lender to get the job done. It took another two weeks but the new lender was able to get the file underwritten and closed the first day of November. Whew! Fortunately, the buyers agent, the sellers, and the buyer himself were all very patient during this agonizing and unfortunate process. All of us were being held hostage by a bad lender.
I won’t mention the bad lender’s name here but we definitely learned who to avoid.
In the end, my clients were extremely happy they were able to close and they will be on the prowl for another home to restore in the Ogden area. Congrats to them! This transaction will always be remembered.
