How exactly did we get here?

So it all started one Sunday when I was surfing the internet. I don't know why but I was looking at houses for sale in our zip code. Not that we needed a new house, ours was perfectly beautiful.

I came across one in our dream neighborhood. It has a basement (and we live in the desert- so this would be a luxury). It was 6600 square feet (we could live in it with ten of our closest friends!) and it was only $389k. I hyperventilated. I called my realtor and asked her to meet us over there.

Unfortunately the home was so badly vandalized it wouldn't have made sense to even try to clean it up unless I was a general contractor. But that set the ball in motion. I asked our realtor to set us up for auto-pops to let us know when anything in that neighborhood goes on the MLS.

Four days later- bing! We get an auto-pop. Similar model (6300 square feet- we can only live there with nine of our friends) and this one was absolutely move-in ready. (well, the carpet and paint really could be re-done, but if you absolutely had to you could probably move in as-is).

The catch? It was a short sale. The highlight? We really didn't have any rush. We already had a beautiful home that we owned so sitting and waiting for the new escrow to close shouldn't have been any big deal.

There was my kiss of death. At any rate- we went into contract May 11th and began working on our financial arrangements. The loan approval was no problem- we had that within two weeks. We were more concerned about renting out our current home. I had been researching our neighborhood and was seeing that the homes in our area were averaging 60-90 days on the MLS and then were renting for decreased rents- and neither was a prospect we were excited about.

Because we are extremely conservative we decided to list our home for rent on the MLS on June 23rd. By June 30th we had so many offers we put it in contingent status and chose one family that was willing to wait until at least September 1st to take occupancy.

It should have all been fine, right? Except that we have had no forward progress on this short sale. So we debated back and forth- do we pass on the qualified tenants that we had that wanted to sign a two year lease or did we relocate temporarily in hopes that the short sale would be wrapping up within 60 days or so?

And that, my friends, is how we got to where we are. We relocated to a short term rental. Thankfully for us we were lucky to get this house. The landlord kindly sympathized with our situation and let us sign a sixty day lease with the option to go monthly after that. We packed half of our stuff into two sixteen foot PODS and the other half has been crammed into our little short term rental.

We have uprooted our two children (one aged almost three and the other eleven months). We have tossed our lives upside down. We gave up our beautiful four thousand square foot golf course home. And now we are in limbo and only praying that this short sale really does go through.

We even put an offer in on a bank owned home last weekend hoping maybe we could get some resolution there- but our offer was not even given a second thought as they took a cash offer with no notification to our realtor.

This has been an emotional process. Physically trying. And some days I feel my heart and my soul are just going to break. I wonder what I have done, and why I have done it. I have researched everything I can find about short sales- and I will continue to post everything I find for you in this one convenient location. Stop back by soon!