Greetings and salutations to all of my loyal fans (I think I may have 3 or 4 out there),

The last month has been quite interesting as we take on a new adventure; finding a new house. Nearly 4 years ago, we went through this exercise in an extreme seller’s market and bought a small house at a high price. We’ve have spent some time and money and have turned it into a home that we truly enjoy now.

But the market has changed qute a bit now. With all of the sub-prime mortgage woes, the market here has drastically shifted from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market and there are good deals all around. We are in a position to at least look into these deals to see if any work for us. Overall, so far we’ve scoped out about 25 or 30 houses over about a month. We were starting to get a little discouraged since we couldn’t find a good match between floor plan and location yet.

We are going to be very picky this time. Since we don’t have a need to move at all, if we’re going to, the house has to be nearly perfect for what we want. Most of the houses available in our price range and area are bank repos; which are very much a crap shoot. People can get angry when they are losing their house and often times ruin carpet, walls, and even smash in doors among other items in the house. Our budget is such that either a house has to be VERY cheap where we can spend some money to fix things up or has to be in great condition that won’t need much work. Until yesterday, there had only been two houses that were remotely possible and neither were perfect.

Yesterday some of that may have changed. We went to see around 7 houses and 3 of them were possibilities. The first is quite cheap and needs all new flooring and paint, but the floor plan is spacious and I could picture us living there. The 2nd was a nice house with an owner still occupying so they probably wouldn’t come down into our price range. The third is nearly perfect! Great house (over 2600 sq ft.) in a very nice neighborhood. The price is a touch out of reach but since it is a repo, we may be able to negotiate. Seeing this 3rd house trumped the 2nd so we are currently looking into putting an offer on one of these 2. We will go back today to get a better look at the non fixer-upper and if it is something we still like, we will write up an offer and see where it goes.

Overall, this is a much better situation since we are much more in control and aren’t in a matter of need like before. I’ll keep you posted if we offer on either of these houses or as more viewings come along. Take care, all!