Today we had an interesting message left on our answering machine. There is a home in our our neighborhood that has been vacant for over a year. I emailed the next door neighbor of that house and asked about it. We eventually decided it was too expensive and not worth it. Well the owner, who is also a real estate agent called us. He had been told by a couple of people in the ward that we might be interested. He said they had a buyer that made an offer of $370,000. It was a short sale and the bank approved that price, but they buyer fell through. He said he was going to put it on the market at that price, and it would virtually be the only home in Alpine that is not listed as a short sale at the moment. He just wanted to give us first chance at it if we were really interested. He made sure to mention that there was no pressure though.

The interesting thing is that I saw this as a big opportunity. The home appraises for about $450,000 right now. So it would have instant equity. It is on a 3/4 acre lot. Yeah the payment would be a lot more, but the thing about this house is that it has a mother-in-law apartment that could be rented out. So ultimately, our monthly payments could be slightly less. I was surprised that Rachel has been the level headed one. She is not really interested. She thinks we should stay where we are at and continue to fix up this home. I suppose she is right. You never know what the future hold so a good plan right now would be to pay off our current home and get completely out of debt. But still, I just had to see an opportunity like this pass.