Found another house I like BUT...

I've been poking around websites listing houses for sale since September and I keep seeing the this one house on a main street, large 4 bedroom 1 1/2 bathrooms, garage, partial basement & central air.

So I finally went and saw the house last Saturday afternoon, in the pouring rain which is actually how I would suggest looking at houses. This way you know if there are any leaks, major or otherwise.

We went to check out the back patio first, it's kinda pieced together, pretty funny considering the comment was made it looked like something Tom (my step-dad) built. You'd have to know Tom to know that it was really funny!!

Anyway the house is great & HUGE, surprisingly so! All bedrooms, two bathrooms lots of closets all on ONE FLOOR! Can't beat that. There is also a large basement with the 1/2 bath down there, a laundry area and a work area in separate sections.

Oh & don't forget the backyard, not huge but a good size - can have a BBQ with plenty of room.

The only thing getting me is the cost of the house, YES I know this house is priced WAY WAY below it's market value because of it being a REO property. But let's consider this, in April home foreclosures were up and home prices dropped again. Banks are holding more & more inventory as the markets worsens instead of getting better (at least for now ~ there's always a down turn before it comes back up).

There's a ton of stipulations with buying this house including the requirement to get pre-approved by their specified mortgage company. They can require that a buyer is pre-approved by any company they choose however by law they cannot require you use that company. So I went thru the motions and BOY does that mortgage company offer incentives to use them. I don't know why but this has me very nervous. If it looks to good to be true it probably is...but I'm sure they'd be open for a ton of law suits if they didn't live up to their agreements. So I'm seriously considering this house and this "new" mortgage company.

Just to be on the safe side I wanted to poke around a bit more. I came across a 3 bedroom 1 bath ranch house (means no basement) at $137,610 talk about a strange asking price. So I've asked my realtor to set up an appointment so I can check this house out just to compare.

I need to be sure before I put in another bid for ANY house.

Will I finally get to buy a house this year??