It's Not Happening

Oh, how sad it makes me, but this will not be our new front porch.

*Sigh* We've been told that it is not looking like the house will be ours. It appraised, and they are headed toward closing. It's all good - I mean, it's disappointing, but we did what we could when we could do it. I feel good about that.

I like when decisions are made for me, for better or for worse. What I don't like is when I have to make decisions at the risk of making the wrong one.

I could make a long story out of it, but while on the treadmill this morning, Pandora made me realize more than ever that I really just want to end up in the neighborhood that we've been trying to get into (where the house we're not getting is located). The neighborhood has sidewalks that eventually connect to my current running route, which is a super major plus.

We may find something there that's really, really super nice, or we may have to sacrifice on the house so that we can be in the neighborhood. The neighborhood part is really, really important to me. The fact that we met our realtor a couple Sundays ago at the tennis courts and saw Alta (USTA perhaps? T2?) matches going on, with many onlookers, is EXACTLY what I want out of a neighborhood. Their HOA Facebook page has 185 likes, and you can look at profile pics and tell that it's full of young families like us. THAT'S what I want more than just the house (I'm telling you all ahead of time so that, if we end up in an ugly house, you're not all like "what are they THINKING?").

Of course, we went to see a house today in a neighborhood fairly close by, just one school cluster north, and I feel that whole thing is being tested. The house - PERFECT. It must have been a distressed property, bought and flipped by an LLC of some kind, and it's GORGEOUS. The lot is perfect and wooded, it's in a cul-de-sac, and it's more house than we ever need. I want it badly, but in a vacuum. It's not in the neighborhood we want to be in, and it's not in a neighborhood that I sense even has a similar community feel. Now the question is what would be more regretful - turning our backs on this amazing house or turning our backs on the neighborhood we like?

We've (unofficially) gotten the whole selling our house thing out of the way, so this is the part where we buy whatever house we want as soon as we possibly can (like, yesterday), and it's supposed to be so much fun!!! Why isn't it?!?!