Homeless

As many of you know, Steve & I are completely throwing caution to the wind and acting as though we were right out of college again & didn't have three kids and two jobs :)

For those of you who have visited us in Parker, you know we are getting a little tight in this house of ours. It has been a fabulous first home, but the days of five of us sharing one shower are getting slightly old. And it's not that I mind our guests walking into our home and being able to see the kitchen/kitchen sink/toy room/master bedroom/music room/nursery/bathroom all at once, but...well, I do mind that. Last May we contacted a realtor about selling our home, and started some fixing up, getting it ready to sell. After John passed away I could hardly function on a day to day basis, let alone list & show a house with 3 kids under four.

Fast forward a year and we were ready to try again. We spent a large chunk of our tax return getting the house fixed up (new concrete, paint, yard work, staging, storing stuff, etc), the entire time a little sick to our stomach knowing in this h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e housing market we would likely lose everything we were putting into it. We'd be lucky to walk away breaking even. But as anyone who reads the news knows it is THE BEST time to buy. We were told by EVERYONE here to rent, but we didn't want the headache of background checks, maintainance on two homes, etc. After about a month of work on the house, we were ready to list. Our good friends came to us the day before we put the sign in the yard and asked if we'd be interested in a rent-to-own deal. Hello...YES! They are immaculate, he maintains and repairs homes for a living, and would be invested due to eventual ownership. A true answer to prayers.

We started looking at homes and put an offer in on a beautiful home going into forclosure. We have prayed the entire time to be guided in what feels to be a HUGE decision on so many levels, and when we walked into this home I looked at Steve and we both nodded. It was home. It has every single thing we dreamed of except it is not in our current ward (congregation we attend church with) who are truly our family as we live so far from most of our family. It is just across the street from these dear friends, which makes it a little more bearable. It is a short sale - which has nothing to do with the amount of time it takes. You make an offer to the bank "short" of what the house is worth. And then you wait. And wait. We put an offer in on Feb 19th and haven't heard back yet. We've heard some positive things - they are doing the BPO (equivalent of an apraisal), have postponed the forclosure auction because of our offer, have not accepted other offers - but we are just waiting for the final say!

Soo...that leads us to our dillema. Our renters are moving in on April 30th. They were going to move in on March 30th, but patiently extended their lease an additional month to give us more time. So the question you may be asking is the only logical one, "What are you going to do now?" Well, that's a very good question and we're open for suggestions :) I run the scenarios over in my mind - what if we don't get the house at all? What if we don't get it for another 3 months? What if we have to start house hunting all over again? (Which we have continued to do - we've looked at 34 houses in Parker - none come even close to the one we put an offer in on, so it gets a bit discouraging).

What I know for Sure: 1) My Mom has tickets to come out next weekend and help us move out & clean. 2) And we have some very dear friends who have offered to let us stay for a few weeks (2 months ago - Friends: "If things don't work out we'd love to have you stay with us" Us: "Ha-ha. That's so nice of you, but we'd never do that to you." And here we are.)

The selling realtor said he was preparing his clients to close by April 30th and his last email said "are your buyers prepared to close at lighting speed?" So the carrot is being dangled, making us not want to do anything too permanent (like get into a rental), but leaving us flying by the seat of our pants. I haven't felt this way since we flew to Hawaii for Steve to go to school with no jobs, just our car and a 3 day hotel reservation. Those were the days.

Well, that's the update. We're crazy.