Not Feeling The Luck O' The Irish

Having two children while going to college and incurring the student loans sufficient to feed them really impedes any effort at buying one's first house. When barely scraping up enough for diapers and electricity there's not a lot left over for a down payment. Add a third child to the mix and you get where we are. Early 30's, three children, renting.

We absolutely love our house, warts and all. It's about 40 years old and needs a lllloootttt of work but the street is quiet, we have great neighbours, the school is good, and we have an ocean view. We love it here.

Aside from making major physical improvements on the house, we treat it like we own it. It's clean (for the most part), the yard is maintained, we respect it and make any small repairs necessary without running to the landlord for every little thing. Actually, the only time we speak to them is once a year when we give them a year's worth of post-dated cheques... and we pay our rent on time, every time. We are the perfect tenants.

Much to my utter disappointment and despair, the owners called on Monday night to tell us that they have decided to sell the house. The realtor is coming over tomorrow afternoon to evauate it and set a price. The sign should probably go up over the weekend.

This has brought us to somewhat of an unexpected crossroad. Do we continue to rent and pay someone else's mortgage or do we beg, borrow, and steal our way into buying our own home? While not really getting our hopes up too high and coninuing to look for another rental property, we have applied for a mortgage. I have felt like vomiting every five minutes since we started taking to the broker on Tuesday. The paperwork has been filed and we're just waiting to hear whether or not someone is feeling charitable enough to lend 300k to a couple without a downpayment or not.

Please send good mortgage vibes our way. I'll try not to throw up from the stress in the meantime.