All grown up…

'cause we have been pre-approved for a mortgage, and I am just excited, nervous, freaked, and all of the above. Mind you, we don't actually know that we are going to buy a house, but we thought on the off-chance that we found a homestead-like place that we wanted to buy in the DC suburbs*,then we should have the funds available.  I don't know of any reputable Realtor who will take my say-so as the end-all, be-all in what we can afford to purchase, and rightly so.   

We received the good word yesterday and immediately pounced on the real estate listings.  Peter found the perfect place five minutes later on Zillow.  Fabulous, until we realized that the previous listing agent had never removed the listing and the house actually sold last June. Thanks, Zillow, *deletes from Real Estate bookmarks*!  I then did a quick search, found a great place and Mr. nixed it as it is a teensy-weensy bit over our 'approved' amount. Details, details.  Now, realistically, are we going to find a house on the net and love it so much that we sign a contract the next day?

Nope.  We are just going to peruse until our eyeballs have popped out of their sockets from staring at the computer screen too long, and the girls promise to share a room if we will quit asking their opinion on every house we even remotely like.  HA, as if!  Then we will just freak out, reverse our stance on buying, and peruse the rentals in other areas like crazy.  Oh, wait, we didn't stop doing that in the first place.  

Now should you happen to absolutely love and adore your neighborhood, the schools seem reasonable (I realize this is open to interpretation), the commute (to DC and/or Arlington) doesn't require hotel reservations (yes, PA is out), the area is fairly walkable, and that cute little cozy, yet roomy and very updated Cape Cod down the street *with a basement* (this might be my major requirement) is available, feel free to shoot me an email.  We loved our old neighborhood, but not sure we would find exactly what we want in our limited time-frame.  

*We are not avoiding the city, but we need to have residency in a certain, er, Commonwealth, if you will.  We  feel we should purchase in said state eventually in order to make sure those pre-paid tuition plan payments that choke us each month will actually work in our favor.