We’re waiting…

That’s what this Spring break has been so far. We’re waiting to hear if we get the house. Everyone (the lenders and both agents) say that the outlook is good. That most likely we’ll take possession in the next couple of days, but it’s hard to trust that when we’ve been burned before.

I was writing on my personal blog yesterday that it was looking like we were going to have to write another check in order to extend the contract, and the way that things were going I didn’t think that was prudent.

We’ve got the first two days of the extension covered, but we’ll have a choice to make if that isn’t going to be enough. The choices are: A) Write another check of hard earned money, and hope that the deal goes through. There are no guarantees in real estate and this is no exception. We could lose all of the money that we have put in and have nothing to show for it in the end. But…it might make the deal go through. B) At five o’clock on Wednesday we walk away. Knowing that this house was a rare one. Knowing that the space and layout and repairs needed for that price are not the norm. Knowing that it will be difficult to find something comparable or nearly as good. Knowing that this price would have given us so much more financial freedom. Knowing all of that, we could walk away.

My father-in-law says it’s worth the gamble. He probably knows what he’s talking about since he’s a real estate attorney…but he’s also a real estate attorney, so a few hundred dollars isn’t a big whoop to him. He says that if you really like a $5 Manhattan and the price goes up 3% you still buy it…it’s only 15 cents for godsakes. But what if you only have $1 and you can only make a down payment and you may or may not get the Manhattan with the down payment, and you forfeit your 15 cents…then you only have 85 cents if you end up having to move on? Is it still worth it?

I thought it was supposed to be a buyer’s market, and I thought that meant that we could basically name the terms of this deal. I was wrong. It’s nobody’s market right now. Regulations are so tight it’s hard to get anything bought or sold. If we had a few thousand extra lying around somewhere maybe it would be different, but as a young couple living on a teacher’s salary…do I even need to finish that sentence?

Of course this housing thing is where all the economic problems started, and I keep hearing that this is where it will start to end too. I kind of thought we were doing a service buying up a toxic asset…but as of right now, it hardly seems worth all the trouble.

Maybe in the end, we won’t have to make the decision about whether to walk away or not. Our lender says he hopes that we have the luck of the Irish today, so that we can just close and this whole nightmare will be over. I hope so. I really do.

Are you having to make tough financial choices right now?