The One With the House

So. Our househunting story. Many of you know we decided to try to buy a house a few months back, and got an agent and spent many a day and night pouring over internet listings, going out looking, etc. After a little while, we were discouraged at not finding anything nice in our price range (neither of us has any fixer-upper skills...thus making a lot of houses out of option for us, since most of the houses in our range were more "as is" properties.) We recognized the benefits of the tax credit, buyers market, etc....but we just decided for us, with the baby coming, etc, maybe it wasn't the time to buy a house.

Flash forward 3 months.

I got a call from a friend of my families--her mom and my mom are best friends and we've known their family for years. Basic story, she owns two houses. She can't afford both and is facing foreclosure on one, so she asked what the price we could pay for a house was. I told her the top of our budget (which is 150 THOUSAND LESS than what she owes on the house) and she said "Great. Put in an offer. As long as the bank agrees, I'll sell it for that." Ummm. Holy cow.

I can't explain how much we are in love with this house. She gutted the entire thing and has rebuilt everything and it's all custom--crown molding, lighting, custom blinds, new appliances, paint, jacuzzi tub, big backyard, nice neighborhood, finished basement, 3 (possibly 4 bedrooms), 2 bathrooms....it's so much more than we were ever thinking we could get.

So. We're putting in an offer. And then we have to wait and see if the bank takes it. We're super nervous. The house is at the absolute top of our price range, so it will make our budget a little bit tight, though doable. And there's a lot of details to work out if it does happen--so for now, we're just waiting! Basically we feel like the chances of the bank approving the offer are pretty slim, so if we get it, we want to make it happen. We feel like this opportunity is incredible, and we feel like it coming at this point in time is totally a God thing. We'd completely given up on the idea of buying a house, and this just came out of nowhere.

We're anxious to see what happens and where the coming months take us!