A Tale About a House, continued...

A few weeks before Christmas I had a lot of PTO that I needed to use up before the end of the year which meant that I had a lot of time to peek at Realtor.com in between wrapping presents and baking.  Everything in our price range was just... blah.

So I broke my own rule of not looking outside of our price range and guess what I found? The house! It was listed as a foreclosure and, unfortunately, $17,000 more than it was when it was a short sale.  I really, really tried not to get my hopes up and start dreaming about it tooooo much so I didn't say anything to my Beloved right away.

On our way out of town on our New Years Day Annual Road Trip (2011 trip here and 2012 trip here and here), this time to the Southwest part of the state - Kalamazooo & Battle Creek area - we decided to hit up a few houses, in a different town that I had found.  None of them tickled our fancy so I gently brought up the fact that the house was back on the market.  There was brief excitement in my Beloveds eyes before he said "What about that furnace? Where would we get wood from?" and that is how the argument started.  It ended fairly quickly, the two times a year we argue they usually do, and I decided not to bring it up again.

Until a few days later when I may have accidentally typed in Realtor.com and immediately typed the address in the search box. They had dropped the price to the Short Sale price!

Say what?!?

Being sneaky resourceful I talked my Beloved into actually sitting down with me and looking at houses on the internet. I may or may not have left the webpage open to the house as I answered the phone.  He noticed it and the reduced price but said he was still anxious about the furnace.  So I distracted him by pointing out a different house that didn't look too awful in the pictures and had an acre of land.

Having nothing better to do we called the listing Realtor and asked her to show us the house.  It was a dump.

While there she asked us what we were looking for, we left it pretty open and told her acreage and not in a subdivision.  The next morning she e-mailed us some listings and guess what? There it was, my future house was on the list.  We agreed to go see three houses including the house of my dreams.  We invited my mother-in-law along for the ride and I was hoping she would love it as much as I did and talk some sense into her son.

The first house was a hot mess.

The Realtor tried really hard to talk us out of going to see the farmhouse and going to look at the more expensive house, telling us about all of the drawbacks of an old house - all I heard was blah, blah, blah.  Even as she was unlocking the door she was outlining the problems we would have with owning a 150 year old house.

And just like that the magic of the old place came over her and she said "I love it!"  My mother-in-law too fell under its spell.

We did a quick walk around and then headed to the basement.  There, shining brightly in the light of my Beloveds flashlight was a brand spanking new, shiny silver gas furnace!

It was then that my Beloved turned to me and said "Let's do this, let's buy the house."

And here we are.  After placing a bid, then a counter bid against an investor, we are buying it!

Well, that is if the inspection goes well today.  I am going to take my camera and take some pics while the inspector and my Beloved are rooting around the house making sure it is a worthy investment.  Which it will be.  I just know it.