House Hunting

Spring is trying to make an effort to arrive in Colorado Springs, but Winter is resisting with a bit of snow falling each week. Along with the arrival of spring has been the reminder that our one year rental lease will soon be coming to an end. We found ourselves a realtor and have begun the arduous task of house hunting. Usually I would think of looking at houses as kind of fun, but when there is a specific area you hope to find a house in and nothing in your price range seems to come up in that area...it becomes stressful. That has been the situation here. About half the houses listed for our area are short sales, which should really be termed long and most likely impossible to get sales. Half of the remaining inventory is under contract, too small for a family of six, or requires years of work and thousands of dollars to update. So the process has been mostly discouraging.

In the midst of this, I also realized that I was sad about really settling here. The process of building friendships has been very slow, and it makes me sad to think of living here long term (in the stage I am at in adjustment and friendship building). I didn't realize I was at this point until we seriously started considering homes.

Right now we live in District 20 (schools), so all my shopping and most of my interactions have been in this part of the city. With such a low inventory in our area and with most of the homes in our price range being listed for $15,000-20,000 more than other parts of the city, we have been considering living out of district. If we do that, it will mean we will have to open enroll Nathaniel into a District 20 school next year for middle school, and then again open enroll TaLisa and Nathaniel when they move into high school. There is no guarantee that they would be accepted. In some ways, it is like moving to a new city (if we buy a home in another district in Colorado Springs). So along with the concern about other schools, I have been mourning the idea of a move to another part of the city and starting over in relationship building in a new area.

So if you are reading this, I would ask you to pray that we will find a great home here in District 20. One other thing to pray over, we are considering putting a bid on a HUD home just across the border in District 11. If this is where God has us to be, pray that our bid would be accepted. This is the first REALLY descent home we have found at a really descent price.