Fannie Mae I? Yes you may.

A mortgage update. We locked in our rate and I negotiated with the Credit Union to bump it only by an eighth of a percentage point instead of a quarter. So they are drawing up our documents as we speak. And wouldn't you know, the day after we locked in the rate, my buddy Brian Lombard from the county assessor's office finally returned my call to report that he had indeed changed our home designation from a condo to a duet which is essentially an attached single family home. So instead of code 6 for condo, we are at code 1-D for Single Family Home - Duet. Knowing this before we had the home appraised would have obviously given us a very different number and would have meant no increase in our rate per Fannie Mae's annoying new condo provision, but it will certainly be a boon for our resale value. Now instead of thinking that buying this house was the biggest miscalculation of our lives, we are hopeful to eek out a modest profit when we do decide to sell.

And we continue to be harassed by telemarketers claiming to be associated with the federal government's Help for Homeowners act. As far as I can tell it's only the scammers who have seen any benefit from the federal government's generosity.