OMG,
our real estate agent called and we have some serious interest in our
house!.Bob accidentally ran across some people looking a couple of days
ago when he went over there to change the batteries in the smoke
detectors, because he'd noticed they were chirping. We were heartened,
because they were the first people to look in a couple of months. The
agent called tonight to say that they're really interested! Only thing
is, they are not sure whether they need to sell their house first or
not. They kind of think they don't, but on the other hand they'd like
to...they are supposed to be meeting with financial folks and their
agent again, and we should know more in a day or two. Please send
"buy" thoughts to them (or send more, if you already saw my
plea on Facebook 
) - we would be soooo happy to sell it! We could refinance this house to
a much better situation, be financially ready to adopt, and maybe even
take Laurel to Disney World for Spring Break... 
WE HAVE A CONTRACT!
We're not totally, 100% thrilled, because we took more of a hit than
we'd hoped. They sent an offer last night, we sent a counteroffer
meeting them a bit to their side of halfway, they sent a counter-couter-offer,
we made one last counteroffer to try to salvage at least a couple
thousand more out of the deal, they took it. When all was said and done,
we accepted $8,000 less than our asking price (which was already $15,000
less than the house was appraised for last year) and agreed to pay their
closing costs up to 4% of the purchase price (which is $267,000). But
the good news is, they want to close February 17! We can be done and rid
of it, and move on. As bad as the market is, it seemed like the best
thing to do. We won't have to worry about renting it, we can have our
finances settled before we adopt, and we can go ahead and buy a couple
of things that would really help us out at this new house, like an
emergency generator so we don't have to worry about not having water
when the electricity goes out (since we're on a well now) and a
whole-house filter for the water, because it has a lot of grit in it.
And (assuming all goes well) we'll even have the money in time to go to
Disney for Spring Break! 
The buyers have already been preapproved for the loan, so the only
outstanding issue I think would be the inspection, which should happen
next week - but we're not too worried, we took good care of the house
and had things like the septic system and the heat pump inspected
regularly. And if something major is found, well, we'd have to take care
of it in order to sell the house anyway, so we'll probably just suck it
up and do it. So, hopefully only a month before we're back to being
single-house owners...and the first of my wishes for 2009 is granted!
