Waiting

In early-April Wade and I had a bit of a revelation and realization when his position was turned into a permanent one (hello job security!) and I was given the green light to set up a home office. We decided it was time to move to St. Petersburg to give Wade a break on his current hour long (one way) commute. We had an idea of where we'd like to live - close enough to downtown (where his office is) for him to bike to work or me to bike to town for lunch. We only have one car now, so location was something I was quite adamant about - I didn't want to be stuck in suburbia where I couldn't easily bike to get something if I needed it, and Wade could bike to work if I needed the car.

After some more thinking, we realized that it might finally be time for us to feel like adults and buy a house. Yikes, that was a big mind-shift for us since we have moved almost every year for the last 8 years. So, we narrowed down some areas and our price range, found a realtor, and we started looking at places... which has occupied most of our free time since mid-April. What we have discovered is that right now, most houses in our range are short-sale (pre-foreclosure) houses. Which, complicates things quite a bit for a few reasons. We've largely been encountering people who don't want to come to terms with the current value of their house since they paid way too much for in in the last few years. This results in people not wanting to negotiate which makes the offer process less than enjoyable for everyone involved. Part of the problem we've also encountered is people putting their house on the market hoping to sell it for what they (over)paid for it by catching a first time home buyer sucker looking to take advantage of the tax credit. The first house we put an offer on in April was that kind of situation, which was really frustrating - they didn't want to negotiate and instead of countering they decided to take their house off the market (they'd been trying to sell it for the past 6months). Lovely. So we moved on and found another place we like a lot more and is in a part of town we love. So we put in an offer at the end of April, which the sellers accepted, but now we have to wait for the bank to review the offer, do their own appraisal, and counter or accept our offer. The waiting is physically painful.

I've been quiet about this for a while because it felt like we would jinks it by telling people too soon. But, now that we're in the waiting game with the bank what we really need is some moral support and positive thinking that they'll accept our offer and hurry the heck up! Our realtor has told us it could be anywhere from 2-6 months from now before we could close, unless a modern miracle happens (we could use one of those to still get the tax credit). Our first hurdle however, is getting the bank to accept our offer. The house is owned by Bank of America, and they are apparently notorious for taking an obscene amount of time to respond, then are greedy about the price when they do respond. So, we're doing lots of praying, chanting, envisioning, whatever you want to call it, in hopes that they get the message to accept our offer and hurry up. So, whatever hopeful thoughts you can send our way and to BoA, are greatly appreciated. :)

In the mean time, we are trying to keep our minds busy by enjoying the Florida sun - summer is officially here in every way (except the rain so far), so we're soaking it up on Anna Maria on the weekends.