Nothing exciting to report, alas. My US mortgage broker played phone tag with me for a couple of months, then went silent. I eventually found out, just last week, that he "gained control of his trust fund" and thus is in the Bahamas drinking pina coladas.
Good for him!
So I'm now working with another broker from the same firm, thankfully he sat in on my meetings with my original broker when I was in the USA, so I'm still dealing with somebody with whom I have a personal connection. He's bringing himself up to speed on the deal - which has become rather unusual/complex
- and I should get some advice from him in the next few days about finance.
All the indicators in the area I'm looking at are encouraging. Very little to no construction happening, and even approved apartment complexes (several hundred doors each) are not being built because they can't be funded. Very bad for developers, fantastic news for me, as the housing shortage is going to get quite severe in about 5 years' time, IMHO. Prices are still falling modestly, tipped to bottom out in the next 3-6 months, only about 10% below peak. Jobs and population still growing, the regional economy has weathered the storm relatively well.
I had wondered if my broker's lack of responsiveness was because it's hard to fund a deal without a deposit ("earnest money" in their lingo), and had considered putting together a syndicate. I'm quite pleased, in a way, to learn of my broker's situation, because it may mean that finance wasn't the obstacle at all... it was just that my broker was winding down to retirement. If I can finance the deal without having to form a syndicate, it makes my life much simpler, and my share of the profits larger.