Our house... maybe?

I went over to look at the house at 4:00 today. Before that, I was all keyed up all afternoon. I didn't even know what to pray. I called David, and told him I thought this looked awfully good from the outside. He told me to call him if I thought he should come over and see it.

I got there, and it didn't take long before I just felt like this was it. I called David. He said he had a hunch, and he got a preapproval letter from a lender. That definitely surprised me. It's a wonderful house. It has so many of the things we've been looking for for our family. The bedrooms are on the small side, but the kitchen and family room are big, and they connect. There's a sun room/screened porch off of that with a view of the woodsy back yard. It's got trees, bushes, more trees, and more bushes. The windows are huge. There are hardwoods in the living and dining room, and they're good sized rooms. I really like it a lot. Everything isn't perfect, just like y'all said, but enough is perfect that I feel really good about it.

David is with a friend tonight who used to be a realtor and a broker. They're trying to figure out stuff and run numbers. We decided last night to fire our realtor and look for another one (after a long conversation about how I don't want to feel like I have to ask this man's permission to look at particular houses), so I don't feel the least bit bad about doing this without him. We never signed a contract with him anyway, and we only looked at some houses with him twice. Hopefully he won't have hard feelings, but I feel like we had clean motives.

But, anyway, I'm incredibly thankful for someone who can help us with all this in the absence of a traditional realtor. We would be in so much trouble without Tony. God bless him. He's getting a big birthday present this year. Maybe a weekend's worth of babysitting and an all expenses paid getaway.

Now it's input time again for y'all. I have peace about this house. I think the couple who are selling the house are just good folks. (They're an older couple with grown kids who want to move to the family farm.) The wife told me when I called before going over there that they might have another offer on the house. I believe she is telling me the truth. She told me that another couple told her that they'd be making an offer today or tomorrow on it, but she also said that's all "pie in the sky" without the offer. They have a realtor, so we could bid under them, and they'd still break even because of that. But if the other couple does come through, we could lose it if we don't make an offer tomorrow. What should we do? I'm basically afraid to wait to make an offer because of this other couple.

I seriously think the only reason this house is still there is because they're not selling with a realtor or on the web. I think that's also the only reason we can afford it. I have seen some seriously ugly and badly located houses out there that many people want a lot more for than this. This couple doesn't have a mortgage anymore, and they can afford not to try to ask for way too much. This is all FYI. =)

Now its feedback time. The lines are open. =)