A good year for apricots

It was a good year for apricots. The tree is absolutely loaded with the little suckers. I have several bowls of them in the fridge already, and plenty more on the tree waiting to be picked. I have my work cut out for me this weekend.

And it's a good thing that I have to work on making jam this weekend, because I most definitely won't be spending time thinking about renovating the condo, because we heard today that we can't buy it.

If any of you out there ever decide to buy a condo as an investment property, be sure you check yourself what the percentage of owner occupants is before you write up the contract. Don't trust the seller's agent (or even your own), because he'll just tell you "Yea, yea. It's fine!" Although the bank itself approved the loan, it had to go to Fannie Mae for approval, and they don't like the number of owner occupants of condo units to go below 51%.

I completely understand their reasoning: lots of investors in a condo means lots of renters, and neither the investors nor the renters are usually particularly interested in maintaining the value of it, let alone actually putting money into upgrades. By making sure that there aren't too many investors, Fannie Mae is protecting the value of the units that are owner-occupied, and also protecting the value of the property for the banks holding the mortgages. So I totally understand them wanting to say no, even though we hoped that they'd give us a break because we intended to renovate it and sell it to an owner occupant. I just wish I had known about all of this before we ever made an offer on the place. So frustrating. And I feel so bad for the seller, who is in a bind and needs to sell the place. And unfortunately, the place is in such bad condition that I think it will be a long time before he finds an owner occupant to buy it.

But on the bright side I've found two SUPER CUTE old little Victorian houses right here in Palisade that are for sale and in our price range and SCREAMING at me to buy them and restore them to their former glory. So stay tuned for hopefully good news on one of them!

Before I sign out for the day, thanks so much for the comments and emails about the fire. We are still fine and not at all in harm's way (at least I hope so!), but the fire continues to burn and grow. Last night the smoke was so thick in the valley that the smoke alarm inside the house detected it at 4 am. Sadie actually woke me up right before the alarm started chirping. Thanks, Sadie!!! Fortunately I was able to turn off the air conditioner and stop the room fans in time before the alarm went into full-on freak out mode. Lachlan does not like it when that happens...