Real Estate Market Madness

I have been consumed by real estate lately. It has taken over my life. It has infected my mind and eaten away any part of my brain that was not already dedicated to thinking about real estate. The other night I was awake until 4:30am just looking at house listings on the internet. I'm beginning to understand how Frodo must have felt about the ring. The power and the longing and the total consumption of it all ...

The good news is that my insatiable desire to go deeply into debt has gotten me out of the house a TON over the last week. And it's all thanks to my darling GPS, Sally. I feel that I should write Sally a poem sometime. She's just so amazing and has improved the quality of my life by leaps and bounds. Dear Sally ... how do I love you ...

But my love for computerized navigation systems can only be matched by my fever for house shopping. I blame it on spring fever. The flowers start to bloom & suddenly everybody feels like nesting. And god help be, I've been sucked into it, too.

I should admit, though, that this fascination with local real estate has been going on for months now. In the past, I've spent the odd hour looking at houses on-line, occasionally driving past ones I like, or even driving through neighborhoods I've never seen before just to see if there are any places for sale. My darling husband had been totally uninterested ... until one week ago. That's when I told him that we need to buy a house before he can buy his beloved Audi TT. Tim was confused. He could not see the logic. So I showed him a mortgage calculator & talked about investing money in things that might actually provide a profit some day. I don't know if he absorbed the fine details. But he certainly learned that in the Dictionary of Happy Marriages, "House" will always come before "Sports Car".

Since that night, we have spent hours pouring over listings. I have spent 3 days & much too much gasoline on the roads with Sally, visiting house after house, investigating neighborhoods, & taking notes on my impressions. Since all of this began, we have formally toured three houses (4 if you count Mark's house since his is laid out exactly like one of our old contenders). It's been crazy.

Now we have narrowed it all down to one. One house. One house that we really like. And a part of me is stunned and scared because I've never bought a house before & I can't believe that we may have found Our House in such a short period of time and what if we screw up and what if this is a big mistake and what if it doesn't work out and we have to keep looking but what if it does work out and I'm stuck with this house with these teeny little bathrooms and I don't know exactly what we should do.
Really. I don't.
But when I look at this house, I feel that it is just right for us. Even with all of its flaws, I see hope and possibilities. I almost feel that it has been sitting on this lot, just waiting for us to come home.

We shall see ...