... strike that. Reverse it.

We found out last Wednesday that our landlord has decided that he wants to put our house up for sale when our lease is up. This is despite the fact that when we signed the lease 8 months ago, he said that he "definitely wouldn't be selling it for at LEAST two years." Don't ask me why he would want to sell right now, as there is no way he's going to come close to making back the money he spent on the place when he bought it last December.

So our lease is up on March 1st, and the last thing we want to do is move right now... especially in the middle of winter... but we don't have much of a choice. What we want to do even less is to move into another rental and then have to move again in another year.

Soooooooooo, we're looking to buy a house. It's both exciting and it sucks. We'd be in a much MUCH better position to buy in 6 months to a year from now, which is why we wanted to stay where we are for another year and then buy. On the other hand, now is a GREAT time to buy for first-time buyers (i.e. For people who don't have to sell their current house first). It turns out that since the real estate market is so bad that we can actually afford to buy a place in Park Ridge, which is where we really want to be. Most people speculate that the market will go down even further in the next year (I keep hearing it will drop another 10%) and that's another reason it kinda sucks that we have to buy now. But again, on the other hand, when real estate finally does turn back around (and it will eventually), I think we'll get priced out of Park Ridge pretty quickly, so in some ways it's good we're being "forced" into buying right now when we know we can buy here.

Anyway. We already found a place we really like and will probably make an offer on this week, but we're going out tomorrow with an agent to look at a whole slew of other options before we commit.