Home is where the short sales aren't?

It's amazing how quickly you can go from being head-over-heels in love with one house to falling for another. We had a successful second run with D and we are now trying to figure out how to make this new #1 our home. There are a lot of things that we like more about the new #1 than the old #1 (especially the lower price!), but unfortunately we found that the house is a short sale. I have a hard time explaining what exactly a short sale is (it's not a forclosure, but the bank has a big say in what offer the seller can accept- I think...), but we think that we might be able to at least try to do everything in our power to live there. We've gotten the okay from the loan people, and now we're waiting to hear if L's insurance guy would insure the house with fuses instead of a circuit breaker. If all goes well, then we'll more than likely start the process of trying to purchase the home. One of the crappy things about short sale homes is that it can take a long time for it to all go through. You can make it almost all the way to the end of the ordeal, only to have the bank decide that they don't actually like your offer. It can take 2-4 months (possibly even longer) before one can close on it, and the price the seller has listed hasn't even been approved by the bank yet. Ugh.

At first, I was really upset and felt let down (even though there was no reason for me to be feeling like that yet- it's just a house, right?), but now that we've talked about it more I'm feeling a lot better about it. So what if we don't close in time to get the $8,000? As long as prices stay low, that would just be an added bonus, not a necessity (and L's convinced that they'll probably extend the program). Also, if we wait a bit longer, or if we go for the house that will take a few more months than we had originally expected to take to get the house, we'll have more $$ saved up, and we won't be completely broke and will hopefully still be able to afford groceries each month! Lastly, if it gets sold to people other than us, we know that there are more houses out there, and we'll find something that will make us just as happy.

I think we'll be going on outing #3 with D on Monday, and knowing our trend, we'll probably have a new new #1 by that evening!

The hunt continues...