The House Hunt Continues

We are going out to Lehi to look at a house tomorrow. We have been told that we can have the house we wanted in Bluffdale. We even negotiated the rent to $150 less than what they were asking. The problem is, they don't want to do a lease for more than 18 months. They are going out of state while the wife has some medial treatment and they don't know how long it will take, but it will be approximately that long. I really want to live out there and get to have a farm, but I don't like the idea of having to move again in a year or so. I couldn't do 18 months, because that would put us at December which is during the school year and right before Christmas. I really would love to have a house on an acre, and all the animals and garden that I could have there, but I don't know if it is going to work for us after all.

We did find another house that we like in Santaquin, but we are still waiting to see if they will come down on the rent. They are asking the same as the Bluffdale house, so we are hoping that they will come down also. It needs some work (paint, finish fencing the back yard) but the owner is willing to provide all the materials if we do the work. He has even agreed to drop $800 off the deposit. Now we just have to see if we can get him to take $150 off the rent. If so, we are going to take it. They are willing to do a 3 year lease, which is what we really want, and the house is perfect for us. It is about 5000 sq. ft. with 8 bedrooms and 4 bathrooms. It has a great layout and is on a 1/2 an acre. It's also just around the corner from the freeway entrance. We met one of the neighbors when he came home and we went to ask how the neighborhood/ward/neighbors were. He said all were great, and that he had grown up in Santaquin (he was about my and John's age). I hope that we figure something out soon.

We still haven't even gotten our landlord to give us a straight answer on the house we're in. Every time we ask him if he's going to renew our lease, or sell the house, or what, he just says we'll talk about it more when the time comes. Hello! This is the time! We have 7 kids, and we can't wait around 'til our lease is over to start looking for a house. We need to get something lined up now. I told John that we will just assume that we are moving, and find another house. In the meantime, John called him and said that we had found another house (we always have the Bluffdale house if we don't find anything else) and that we need to know by Monday if we are going to be able to stay here or not. I think that finally got it through his head that we were serious and need to know now, and he said he would get back to us Monday. I am just so tired of living in limbo. Even if he says we could stay, if the Santaquin house owner agrees to what we want I think we will move anyway. If we do get our lease renewed here, it wouldn't be for another 3 years because he really wants to get rid of the house. We wouldn't get more than a year. So I think it would be better to move now, if we find a house we can move into for 3 years, than stay here for another year and then still have to move. So now we get to continue playing the wait and see game.

We did get another house in Spanish Fork that was really nice and they said they would do 3 years, but I think that would be a last choice, just because the yard was so small. It was like .18 acres. That's like the size of my parent's yard in California! Tiny! But it was a really nice house, in a brand new neighborhood, so if it came down to it, it would be an ok choice. It is about the same distance to John's work as we were when we lived in American Fork. We have been looking in a 30 minute radius around John's work and school, so we won't have awful commutes to either one.

Ugh. That's enough of that! More next week when we figure out what's going on.