Well, with a future as parents still uncertain we still found ourselves in the prediciment of whether to make some decisions as "potential parents" or as "forever just a couple". The housing market where we live has been going crazy, consistently rising in leaps in bounds over the last year and we're concerned that if we don't upgrade from our not so kid friendly, two bedroom house now then we won't be able to afford to when and if our family grows.
Already we know we're going to have to pay more than twice what we've paid for our current house, for less than twice the space, and we're not really sure how much we can even get for this place, and if we'll be able to afford the difference in cost.
We were already paying a substantial amount for the Jeep Compass we decided to buy last year, which made our budget a little tight at the time. One hard winter in the little Ford Contour we had before that and I knew I didn't want to subject myself to anymore driving in winter without 4x4, nevermind eventually with kids in the back seat. I was worried enough for our own safety, I can't imagine how paranoid I would have been with children. Not that our Contour was in bad shape, it's just the way our roads get, but add on to that the idea of precious cargo....heck, I drove my first neice home in that Contour on a beautiful, balmy day in October and I drove SOOOO carefully, constantly on high alert.
So, having that 4x4 peace was worth the extra expense. Now we had to debate if a bigger house was worth that extra expense. We decided to take the chance, and it seems it was the correct choice. After choosing to do some work that would maximize our return for as little cash as possible, and getting a very handy brother-in-law to help us, we ended up selling our house for %160 of the price we paid for it!
Then, of course we had to look for a new house. Judging from the market, $200,000 was approaching the minimum cost of the type of house we were looking for, and was actually the asking price of houses in the area we were looking in (but bidders were jacking up prices like crazy). We knew $200,000 was the most we could managably afford and so we were a little worried, especially after the first few houses we looked at in our price range would need quite a bit of work. We decided to look in an area that was our third choice, and that's when we found a perfect house, and literally everything on my checklist was in this house and it was listed for under $160,000! We made sure to get to know the owners a little, make sure we left a good impression, and when we left our VERY high offer with them the next day (which still wasn't over the $200,000 mark) we again made sure to make small talk and be memorable and someone they'd want to leave their house to. We hoped and prayed this would be our house, but there had been about 10 people viewing the house at the same time as us, and the owners said they had close to 50 people through that first day, so we didn't hold our breath. AND, there was no official closing date, they had two days they said they were accepting offers but they didn't list a "decision by" date. The waiting was torturous, as our house was already sold and we did not want to have to put all our stuff in storage and live in an apartment for awhile. And we couldn't keep looking because we couldn't have two offers out at the same time anyway.
But God blessed us tremendously when our offer was accepted today! It only took 14 days from the time our house was put on the market until we our offer on our new house was accepted! The details all worked out so perfectly, from dates of possession, to amounts of money earned and spent, our new routes to work, our new neighborhood, the potential this house would bring us for raising a family. It was definately meant to be. Maybe a family was meant to be.
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