House Hunters ~ Maryland

Z and I have been wanting to move out to the community where our church is located. It will make it so much easier to be involved with the projects and activities we have going, plus it's an excellent school district for the kids. Plus, he is out of the military soon and we need our own place in just over a year regardless. With A's issues about changes in his routine, it may be easier to go ahead and move out there now, and then keep coming to his regular therapists, and then when Z changes jobs and insurance carriers, switch providers (if we have to) then instead of everything all at once.

On a lark, Sunday we drove around the area looking at different things for sale and we happened upon a For Sale By Owner. It has everything we needed (3 bedrooms), plus some of the stuff we wanted (2 full bathrooms and an additional bedroom for a guest room/office, on just over an acre of land so the kids have room to play and I have room to garden). PLUS, there are additional things that we just love: the house is gorgeous and only 5 years old, and we have a view of the mountains. Off one of the two decks!) ~ the only thing is, the asking price is 12K more expensive than what we have been approved for. With the way the market is here, though, she may just jump on it. The house has been up for sale for several months. What we can offer is still $100K more than she paid for it five years ago, so she's making quite the hefty return, nearly doubling her initial investment.

That's the other crazy thing: with Z's credit being bruised after his divorce almost six years ago, we didn't figure we'd qualify for such a large amount, nor for a fixed rate (we counted on an adjustable one, even though we would have preferred the other kind), and figured our interest rate would be pretty high.

Lo and behold, we have 3 different mortgage companies fighting over him, and the best offer so far is a 30-yr, fixed rate of 6.25%. Which is fantastic for here, the lowest most banks will go is 6.50, most are up around 6.98. And that's for perfect credit people, which we most definitely aren't (we aren't that bad, either, but it's not tickling 800 by any stretch).

And we have an appointment at the house tonight to see more and talk turkey.

!

We figured that doors wouldn't even be opened for such a venture, and they're not only open, they're slammed wide open. We have been praying that if this isn't the right one, everything would be shut hard...and so far things just keep getting better and better. We have our approval letter in hand. Z applied on Monday and got it back yesterday (Tuesday). There is absolutely no way we should have made it this far in the process, so we know it has to be God. So we're excited, but trying not to be TOO excited. We'll see where this takes us!

Will post more later, including pictures if we get it. :)