monday miscellany

Well! I have really been slacking on the old blog lately, but I promise it's for a good reason. Lots of stuff going on! This week I will try to write more.

1) Bad news on the house hunting front. We are in a tough situation because we know we can't sell our condo. Therefore, we will have to rent it out if we want to buy a house. A little complicated, but not a big deal. That is, until we found out that our pre-approval for the new house was basically void because of a new regulation. If you're buying a second house and renting the first, you can't get a Fannie/Freddie owned mortgage unless you have a rental history documented on your taxes. We don't have that and it could be a big problem. We're applying with a variety of different mortgage lenders, hoping to find a less traditional loan (private company, credit union) that would be available to us. If that doesn't work out things will be a lot more difficult. So, we're really hoping to get good news about a loan this week!

2) We did still look at a few houses yesterday, and if the financing thing works out there's one more I drove by that I really want to go see. If we're able to buy, there's definitely a house out there for us. It might even be a tough decision. It's fun to look at houses, but not as fun knowing that we might not even be able to buy right now... Speaking of which, I must give descriptions sometime soon of the houses we've looked at because so far we've already had one crazy experience.

3) These new regulations are very frustrating to me. What it comes down to is that a bunch of people screwed up, the housing market crashed, more people screwed up, Fannie and Freddie had to impose new regulations to prevent even more foreclosures, and as a result people like us with great credit get screwed out of buying a house. If we just couldn't afford it, that would be one thing. But we can afford it, and because other people messed things up things are now a zillion times more difficult for us. Grr.

4) The weather has been beautiful, and we've been outdoors every day for the last few days. Celia loves having her sandbox open again. We keep it on the deck and she can play somewhat independently if Chris and I have to be inside for a while.

She always closes her eyes when I tell her to smile for the camera.

5) We had some hot, humid days last week and Celia's hair got so curly! She's gonna have good hair this summer.

I'll try to write more this week than I have been, and hopefully I'll have good news about buying a house... Trying not to get excited in case things get more difficult.