The Appraisal

Well, we got the appraisal back last night and it came in $7,000 under the agreed upon asking price in our contract.
Our realtor wrote up an amendment for the contract asking that the seller come down on the price to meet the appraisal number with no other changes. We signed it, he sent it. He also warned us that it is highly likely the seller might agree to lowering the price IF they are no longer responsible for our closing costs which they were agreeing to contribute $5,000
And as he warned that is exactly what we just heard.
They agreed to lower the price but now they don't want to contribute closing which is a bit of an issue for us.

I have contacted our lender to get a good idea of what our final number will be to bring to closing now that we have to pay for all of our closing costs.

With all this going on our closing date is definitely NOT next weekend. Right now we are shooting for the first business day in October so we can get October and November without a mortgage payment. That's Monday, October 3rd.
Once we get all this figured out we really only have the survey left and then the lenders and title company getting the paperwork together so hitting that October 3rd date should not be a problem.

We will have to come up with a little more money than anticipated but we still believe this is our promised land and that God is very much in this big transaction. With 3 weeks between closing on this house and the farm it is possible we could get our escrow check just in time for closing if we hound the lender a bit. So that's our prayer right now, and that it's enough to mostly cover the extra costs.

Either way we are moving forward and are a little closer to getting to our farm. (And that's a really good thing considering we have added two dogs and 12 chicks to our family in anticipation! ;)

Onward and Upward! :)