Here We Go 'Round the Mulberry Bush

This week has seen me scrubbing, dusting, vacuuming, straightening and generally de-cluttering my home, something I’ve not done in a while.

Hubby and I are trying to get our home loan refinanced, since our credit was good we didn’t feel intimidated by the process but that soon changed. Our home loan is through Bank of America so we went through them for refinancing in hopes of taking advantage of lower interest rates. Well the low rates are out there but the banks aren’t willing to give them to anybody. A few weeks into the process we were told that B of A had granted our request and all was good. Then a couple of weeks later we get word that an appraiser is coming out to appraise the value of our home for B of A. Okay, now we’re confused ! If we’ve been approved then why appraise our property now, why wasn’t it done some time ago ? (wrote about this 1st appraisal 2/25/09 Banks and Dust Bunnies http://abeadersblog.blogspot.com/2009/02/banks-and-dust-bunnies.html)

Anyway that appraisal came in below the county assessed value of our property and, in typical bank fashion, they denied our refinancing. Maddening to think that the bank is now saying our property is valued less so they won’t renegotiate with us...never mind that they are carrying our original loan for the over appraised value anyway ! To me this makes little sense.
We’ve now wasted 3 months of our time as B of A played ring-around-the-rosies with us. Had to start the refinancing procedure all over from scratch. Now we’re working with another bank trying to broker a lower loan rate and of course have to jump through all those hoops yet again, fill out a tome of papers and go through another property appraisal. Unfortunately there haven’t been any sales of homes in our rural area that are even remotely similar to ours and the appraiser even lamented the fact that, since sales have been so scarce for so long, there isn’t anything they can compare it against. Of course the banks want the impossible, an appraisal of a fairly identical property that has sold within the last 3 or 4 months and within a mile radius of the property in question...fat chance of that !
So : " Here we go 'round the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush, the mulberry bush. Here we go 'round the mulberry bush....."

Photo above is of our driveway planter at the front of our home...the Gold Mound Lantana have definitely recovered from the freeze damage.

Photo left is of my bleeding heart vine, it too is recovering quite well and though this photo has nothing to do with my home refinancing the "bleeding heart" seemed apropos.