Interesting developments . . .

It's starting to look like we're for sure going to get the house we're wanting. But, there were some bumps on the road.

I've said previously that the house & garage need the roof replaced, and both need roof vents installed. My wife and I asked the realtor to kick that back to the sellers, because we weren't comfortable financing any more than we already were, and we don't have the money to pay $4k for a roof up front.

Our realtor sent the proposal for the addendum to their realtor - and got a tearful phone call from one of the sellers! Remember, our realtor told us that she's known that family since they were all kids. While it's highly irregular (even considered crossing a line) for a seller to call the buyer's realtor directly, she still talked to them to get an idea what the problem was, then reported it back to their realtor, who is the listing agent.

The gist of the story is, because this is an estate sale, there are multiple people involved on the seller's end, and some just wouldn't agree to "taking a bite out of their money" to get the sale. So, our realtor has been scrambling, and talking with our lender, to find options that won't kill the sale.

The lender found the magic button. We've been paying $465/mo in rent, plus renter's insurance, where we are. We've been saying all along that we're not comfortable going over $500/mo on our payments, and (depending on what the final interest rate is) we're already looking at $515/mo. So, our having to pay for the roof was looking like a deal breaker.

Turns out - we weren't considering that a lot (almost 1/4th) of that was the insurance and taxes. Even if we pay for the roof, we're still only paying $411/mo on the mortgage. And, since the insurance is built into the final total, we can drop the renter's insurance too. And, the lender says he can write the roof bill into the deal so we don't have to pay anything out-of-pocket for it. Oh, and because we're paying for the roof, we get to choose which contractor does it. Sweet, right?

I just got off the phone, and left a message for our realtor. We're going to go for it.