Why does life have to be so damn frustrating? You know how everything just fell into place with selling the house? Of course it couldn’t be that simple. Also, I’m really struggling not to drop an F bomb in every sentence today.

Everything was going along swimmingly until Michael Bolton showed up at my house. Well, at least some guy trying to look like the 1989 version of him, hair and all. The appraiser of our current property. After a few days of him dragging to turn it in, we all had the distinct feeling he wasn’t going to meet the sale price. We began to prepare for the possibility that we needed to make some more cash appear on our money tree in the backyard. We threw around some figures that it might be. None of those figures was as high as $20,000, but indeed, that is how much he undervalued our house by.

So now everything is a mess. A mess for the people buying our house, for us, for the people whose house we are buying, and the people whose house they are buying. Good old Michael Bolton wannabe has jacked all of us up big time.

Our realtor is fighting the appraisal. Especially since he used a pending sale as a comp (a comp has to be closed) and he did not use one property from the Autumn Lake neighborhood (remember the one I complained about stealing all our buyers because they have the same builder and floor plans and are right behind us?) He is ignoring her at this point and she’s talking to the supervisor. But if we can’t get this one adjusted, we have to get another appraisal, which ain’t free, plus, now we are looking at major time restraints, which mean that to continue we must reschedule the inspection of our new house that we cancelled for fear we’d be paying for it for nothing. We will have to do it without knowing if a second appraisal will do us one damn bit of good.

Basically, I’m making the call to potentially flush more money down the toilet that could go into fixing up our current house if this blows up in my face. My anxiety has me feeling like I could throw up. We’re both frustrated, and Chris is at the point of just wanting to fix this house up. But I can’t let go of the fact that if we can make this work, I think long-term, the new house might be the better solution. But the thought of continuing to flush money makes me want to throw up. What if I’m making the wrong call? If we can’t get this appraisal raised, should I just throw in the towel? To even make a second appraisal work, the buyers would probably have to change lenders, too.

Thank you, Michael Bolton, the appraiser. But a couple days ago I was feeling positive and excited. Now I want to punch someone. You.

Have a lovely undervalued day, sir.