Are you my home?

So, we've spent the last three months shopping for our first home. That's inaccurate. 'Shopping' suggests a fun, exciting, positive experience, which is exactly the opposite of how I'd describe our home shopping experience. Our weekends center around open houses, drive-bys, the real estate section of the newspaper, zillow.com and our navigation system. (Hayley is less than inspired by this weekend practice.) The mission? Find an exceptionally affordable home that suits our family, and close on it before November 30th to take advantage of the first time home buyer tax credit incentive. Here's how that's panning out:

Thus far, we've looked at about 40 homes. That doesn't include the other properties we've driven by, creepily peered in windows of, and trespassed into backyards of before determining they weren't a good fit for our family.

Sure, we had a lot of mandatories on our must-haves list, but we thought they were reasonable. One of our must-haves is a big back yard, or... just a moderately sized one. In Michigan, this typically isn't a problem. But here... let's just say if I were spitting watermelon seeds off these backyard patios, they'd likely be hitting a neighbor kid in the face.

We've made offers on three homes.

The first house was a ranch with a small pool in a great neighborhood that had been on the market for a few months. After bargaining for three weeks with the homeowner, we offered him asking price. He verbally accepted, then hours later realized that he didn't want to move anymore, refused to sign our contract and withdrew his home from the market. Awesome.

The second house was a two-level home with a moderately sized back yard in a neighborhood in Hayley's school district. It was a newer home and had everything we were looking for. Unfortunately, the property was a short sale (Realtor code for 'hold onto your pants -- this is going to be the longest home-buying process of your life'). Our offer was the leading offer and the only one being considered by the bank. Unfortunately, while we were waiting for a response the homeowners moved out of the home and took the 3K refrigerator with them (which was included in our contract). Additionally, we noticed a spot of bio-organic growth on the ceiling of the downstairs bathroom. Oh, most importantly, we weren't going to get a response for 90 days which would put us out of the running for our 8K First time home buyers tax credit. Also awesome.

Our most recent moment of house-hunting greatness came last week when we decided to pull our offer on house #2, and make an offer on a third home -- a foreclosure, bank-owned -- that has everything we're looking for except... well, floors. Apparently a rash of trendy homeowners decided that stained concrete floors are an attractive feature. Um, they're not. We'd have to use some of our tax credit to carpet the home. Our offer was low, so we're not exactly expecting to get this Arkansas gem either. But hey... we're on a roll. Why break our awesome house-hunting stride now?

So that's it. Poking around in people's back yards has kept the blog posts lean over the past two months. Say a prayer for us. We'll need them. And as always, we'll keep ya'll posted.