House Hunting

So we're finding out that buying a house in NOVA (Northern Virginia) isn't as easy as it should be.  Even though Fairfax City doesn't have anything significant in it, it is however, the place to be because of the closer commute.  Right now Brian's 20 minutes drive to work with the option of two different back roads is pretty sweet and really rare too.  So if you want to live here, you'll have to be willing to pay more for less.  The cost of land out here is OUTRAGEOUS and when you put a house on it, the price goes up even more.  So $400,000 can get you a 2,000 sq. ft. house...without a garage.  What seems to be the trend here is buying an old house on a nice size property, completely demolish it and then build a mansion from scratch.  I supposed that's a great way to go if you could afford it.  I told Brian we should buy some land and pitch a tent on it.  Haha.  Even though we're not completely sold at living in the heart of Fairfax, we haven't found any city around here that would suit us best as far as finding the right house AND with shorter commute.  So we're just running into this catch 22 thing where we'll have to compromise on something since we can get one but not the other.  Not to mention, everything here goes lightning fast!  We've been told that if we see something we like, we HAVE to put the offer in that day or it'll be gone.  So true as we ran into that a few times.  But it's such a big investment, we need sometime to think it through, talk/pray about it.  Honestly, you can't think...you just have to do it and that's so not our style.  All that has been quite discouraging and frustrating at the same time.  Plus, it's just such a drag hauling our kids to look at houses every weekend.  You know how much they like riding in the car to go anywhere more than 20 minutes. =0P  Fun times I tell you.

On Sunday, we saw a quad-level house with a possibility.  But then we looked in the backyard and saw a gigantic inground pool that wasn't mentioned in the listing at all.  Hmmm.  No thanks.  Then today, we walked into an almost perfect house and almost wanting to put an offer on it, but then the basement is unfinished.  For what they're asking for, I don't think if we could afford to buy it and then drop another 20K to do the basement.  Never mind, I guess we have our answer.  One day on the market and however many hours later, someone already put an offer in.  Anyway, we're praying for some quick and clear directions on what to do as far as buying in general (which house and where) or if we should continue renting.  Whatever it may be, I just don't want to do the whole 40 houses thing again like we did last time.