Tuesday, March 28, 2006

Could be good stuff!

In January, my landlord was kind enough to call me and let me know that he and his wife have decided to sell the house we're living in when our lease is up at the end of August. If you've been reading for any length of time, you know that we couldn't be more pleased with the property owners - they're really good people. I thought it was wonderful of him to let us know so early. But not only that, he said that they'd work with us should we find somewhere to move before the end of our lease. Oh, and if we were to decide that we'd like to buy it, they'll consider a sizable discount. They're awesome.

Anyway, we have decided that we don't want to move. Not only don't we want to go through the process of packing and moving our shit, we really like the neighborhood (with the exception of our crazy neighbor), and we love the school our kids attend. I love Perrin's special ed teacher, and I do NOT want to move him to another school!!

The problem is, we live in a relatively small townhouse, and the going price for such things around here is HUGE. I'm from small town Illinois where one can still buy a nice sized 3-4 bedroom house for under $60,000. Here the same house would easily go for half a million. Townhouses in this area similar to ours have been listed anywhere from $300,000 to $400,000. But they're going down in price. Oh yes, we might just benefit from this bursting bubble of real estate.

Regardless, I really didn't think there was a chance in hell we'd be able to get such a big home loan without major help from family. Yesterday, I figured what the heck? Why not see how much of a loan we could get. So I pretended to be my husband, and I filled out the form at our bank's website using the most we would possibly pay for this house, and guess what? Today, we got a note from the bank saying, "Ok, sure. No problem!" For the whole amount. The whole thing! Without help! Just us!

My head is still spinning.