Reading Wildly

Louise Erdrich

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won’t either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.”

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And then there were none. What is that doing rolling around in my head? It must have lost its way. Almost all things lose their endings. Like friends who promise to write each other – the letters come and go, days apart, then weeks, then no one is writing anymore. But there isn’t a point, a day, you can look back on and say that’s where they stopped, that was the end.

Marianne Williamson

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we’re liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

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I’d like to find one. A particular one. Not the one, because there are multiple ones for everyone. And not more than one, because I only want to sow one field all of my days. I would sit in my easy chair with my head of fluffy white hair and look to the left at my one, and he would look to the right, and I’d smile and the wrinkles around his eyes would deepen as the corners of his mouth turned up. And the love that we’d sown would be tall and lush, softly undulating, stretching in all directions.

Some observations:

• It seems one has to have very good credit to qualify for a HomePath loan. People can qualify for FHA and not qualify for HomePath.
• HomePath is cheaper than FHA, even with a higher interest rate, because you do not have to pay mortgage insurance.

My process:

1. Find a home you like that qualifies for the program.
2. Make a wish list of things you’d like to renovate. It can include almost anything, even appliances.
3. Find a lender that is able to do a HomePath Renovation loan. There are not very many of them. I prefer to deal with the bank directly, rather than a broker.
4. Get pre-approved. Yes, it’s a hassle, but it can be done in 2-3 days, and, since you have to have good credit to do this type of loan, there shouldn’t be a lot of questions.
   • I’m currently right here in the process. Approved but yet to make an offer.
5. Have your Realtor make an offer.
6. Assuming the offer is accepted, you have 10 days to do a home inspection and get a licensed contractor’s estimates. (These are not required for a regular HomePath loan.)
7. An appraisal must be done as if the repairs were complete. The cost of the repairs must raise the value of the home to within 3% of the appraised value. For this reason, you may want to put 5% down, in case the gap between repair cost and appraisal is larger than hoped for.

I found an invaluable/extremely helpful PDF presentation: HomePath Renovation Financing for Fannie Mae REO Properties (large - takes a bit to load).

UPDATE: I decided not to go with the property. It needed a new roof, mold remediation, and some other repairs above and beyond what I was expecting. Back to the hunt.