Dig up St. Joseph

Last fall, interest rates were low, the housing tax credit was in effect, and we were talking about expanding our family. We were happy in our two-bedroom house, and thought about trying to rejigger it to be a three-bedroom, but it seemed like the real estate gods were giving us a nudge.

We decided to keep an eye out for just the right house -- four bedrooms and at least two bathrooms, in a few selected neighborhoods within our town, and of course within our budget. We spent hours poring over the listings and many a Sunday afternoon visiting open houses.

Then, walking down my favorite block in town one day a few weeks ago, I saw a For Sale sign. We saw the house the moment they would let us in, and put an offer on it a day or two after that. As I mentioned here before, it was at the very high end of our budget, but we could swing it. It was in the perfect neighborhood, where we already knew and liked many of the neighbors, and was spacious with a beautiful family room. After several counteroffers, the buyers accepted our offer, but refused any sort of contingency on selling our house. The closing was set for early August.

So we raced ahead with putting our house on the market. Both sets of parents came for the weekend to help us pack, fix, and clean up. (Thank goodness for parents. Happy Mother's Day, here's your putty scraper!) A moving van arrived Monday morning and carted away everything but the essentials we'd need for the next few months. We stayed up until 2 a.m. every night until the house was as pristine as we could manage. On Wednesday, buyers' agents came to check out our house, and a for sale sign appeared in the yard.

We also had the inspection of the new house, which revealed that the roof was nearing the end of its useful life (a $15,000-$20,000 repair) and that the house's ancient wiring would render it more or less uninsurable (a $10,000-15,000 repair). Suddenly, the house went from just barely affordable to $30,000 out of our price range. The sellers would not lift a finger and wouldn't work with us at all, not even when we offered to ignore the roof and increase the purchase price to have them fix the electrical problem, or fix it ourselves for a partial refund of closing costs. (And not even when we told them we had called their own insurance company, which had said it would refuse to insure a house that it knew had that kind of wiring and would require the owners to replace it immediately if they found out. I was tempted to rat out the sellers, but I didn't, in large part because JW told me not to.) From what both agents said, I got the impression that they thought they had lots of other interested buyers and could get more money, so every effort to negotiate on our part earned a flat-out no.

We're out a thousand dollars on the inspection and the estimate for the electrical work. We're getting our thousand-dollar earnest money back. Our house is still on the market and our open house is still scheduled for this weekend. But if we sell, we have nowhere to go.

To be continued, I guess.