Dogwood House - The Wait

September 2009:
We put an offer in on the Dogwood house on September 30th, 2009. I remember the date because it was the day we were supposed to close on the Bremerton house. The seller signed off on his part of the paperwork immediately and now it was in the hands of the bank. The bank had a 30 day deadline to decide if they were going to pass our contract on to the next phase.
Ok, 30 days is the end of October. The tax credit (and our current lease!) runs out November 30th. We still have time...right?
I continue to pack up our apartment, hopeful that we will be moving shortly. This was a foolish act in hindsight and, I think, a large part of the emotional turmoil that was to come throughout the home buying process. All of my crafts, books, journals, and dvds were boxed up and put into storage in my parents garage.

The deadline came and we received an email from our Realtor "The bank needs more time, they will have an answer after another 30 days."

...*crickets chirp*...Say what?? This was one of the first times my poor husband came home from work to find me crying. How does a bank not meet a 30 day deadline just to decide if they want to push our offer to the next level? How does a financial institution (who received a very substantial government bailout) not want to get this process rolling?

So we wait another 30 days. Finally they pass our contract to the next phase. It is now November 20th, and Congress passes an extension on the housing credit. We now have until April 30th 2010 to get the $8,000 tax credit. We also call our landlord and let him know what is happening. On November 30th we'll switch to a month to month lease. The good news, we just have to give him 30 days notice before we move. The bad news, he can give us 30 days notice that we have to move.
Moving into an affordable apartment in our area with a cat, dog, and chinchilla is not an easy feat, so I am not incredibly stressed out.

The stress doesn't help our attempts to try to conceive a child either. Talk about high stress levels.

So we continue to wait for our dream house, because, what else can you do?