NC, it's because of your help that I knew enough to make sure the loan officer got the okay from the actual underwriters. Thank you. Can I ask you something else? I'm a little concerned about the appraiser finding good comps. The loan officer asked if there were comparable properties in the area and I assured her there were, but there's really nothing in this actual "neighborhood." I'm in a rural place. When we were pricing this place, we had to go pretty far for exact comps, or really tweak them up and down to come to our price. There were houses that were nicer with no barns, there were large parcels of land with no houses, there were houses with barns but smaller acreage, etc. Nothing exactly like mine. That's what I'm worried about now. I'm worried they won't find anything close enough. Is this going to be trouble?

You should have a professional handle this situation. You can negotiate with a real estate lawyer to supervise the whole transaction for a fixed fee or utilize the services of a real estate agent. If you use a real estate agent, the developer will have to pay his or her commission and it will not cost you. Arguably, making the developer pay a commission might reduce the amount of concessions the developer is willing to make, however, in my experience as a real estate attorney for over twenty years, you are better off having a professional (and you should be very careful choosing your professional as there are not many out there) negotiating on your behalf to get the most bang for your buck. If you choose either type representative, make sure you "google" them, ask for a resume and check with the local bar association or department of real estate to see if they can refer anyone or have information on the individuals you have spoken to. There are more bad attorneys and poor real estate agents then competant ones out there. The market in Vegas has tanked and will only get worse for the forseeable future. Go for as much as you can-the developer is lucky to have a sale. Good Luck with everything and as bad as the market is, I cannot remember anyone (excluding completely reckless individuals) ever, in the long run, regreting being a homeowner.

Nosoccermom, you're probably fine if you can access your POF immediately (if you can find an agent who's willing to take your word that you can afford the homes they're opening up for you - not something I'm willing to do after the one "freebie" I allow for my listings). I recently had an offer come in not accompanied by a POF, the first counter (on a Monday) asked for POF with the counter. After many counters back and forth all week, we came to an agreement on Friday noon but they had scratched out the POF requirement ( the point is that they knew about it all week). Seller wouldn't sign, refused to take the house off the market without knowing whether the buyer had funds, so it had several (6-8) showings over the weekend before the buyer could produce POF on the following Tuesday morning. Had another higher offer come in before then, the seller would have taken it, so the buyer was in jeopardy for three days because they didn't have POF. Offers here are expected to have POF or pre-approval attached. All HomePath offers as well. Most or many people can at least print out a bank statement 24/7 to prevent something like this from happening. However, it will likely show your full cash worth and that may be something you don't want to show during negotiations. The bank can produce something that says "This person has at least $xxx (the amount of the offer, and not more) in assets with this bank". Pre-approvals take a bit longer. Buyers have to be prepared.

You can do this for less, especially if there are no load-bearing walls involved (which is often true in condos and townhomes). We opened up our kitchen and completely remodeled it using Ikea cabinets and custom granite for about $25k total. Ikea cabinets were $6000 including 2 tall pantries, Ikea installation is $2500, countertops were $5000 installed (you could go cheaper with prefab), and we got a new range $1000 at Ikea and hood $300. Backsplash tile was the Home Depot white subway and totaled about $250 for materials. The rest was labor for the contractors demo, drywall repair electrical and lighting, and permit. And we live in a very high cost area, quotes for renovations ranged up to $100k for this job. I planned the layout in Ikea designer with the help and advice from the gardenweb kitchen forum. Our kitchen was "liveable" after we did a major facelift in 2012 when we bought it (painted peeling old cabinets, concrete skim coated the awful old tile) but it was very poorly laid out, not nice to work in (including stve right beside doorway with no landing area), had very little storage considering the 3 walls of cabinets (few drawers, cavernous blind corners) and felt closed off from the rest of the house. We love our new kitchen and even if it doesn't add significant value to our home (we know we over-improved a bit) we find this kitchen a joy to cook in and entertain guests from, and we also plan to be here at least 5 more years so we wanted to have a kitchen we'd enjoy for the indefinite future.