The House Hunt is Back on

I know, you are all saying that you didn't know it was on in the first place, let alone that it was off.

Jim was indulging my favorite form of free entertainment - going to open houses. We were doing investigational shopping, just to get a feel for the market here, what neighborhoods are like, that sort of thing. We figured that we would sell the condo and move to a single family home.

It turns out that we have negative equity in the condo. Unfortunately, Jim bought at the top of the housing bubble and we all know what happened to the bubble. So, we figured we were stuck and the search was off. Plus, we were seeing places that we really liked and weren't ready to make an offer yet and that was just depressing.

So, we quit looking for a few weeks while we did more research. We concluded that I would see what sort of mortgage I would qualify for on my own (the condo is in Jim's name only). So, I am meeting with some bankers to see a) if I qualify for anything and b) what price point I should be looking for. If I get good news back from the bank, we'll go back to looking. We plan to keep the condo as a rental property until the market recovers enough that we can sell and break even.