Biting My Nails 'Til They Bleed

Our other house still hasn't sold.

If we were awash in money, this might not be a huge issue, but buying this house was a financial stretch and since we bought it, we've been hemorrhaging cash at an alarming rate. If this continues, we won't be able to afford to fix the things on this house that our home inspector told us we really couldn't ignore (like the roof -- don't want to ignore that, no sir).

Until about 3 weeks ago, I was content to let it ride -- the non-selling other house, I mean. I figured we simply listed it at a bad time and the weather, which was horrid this winter, just conspired to make house-hunting unappealing. But now...now I'm starting to feel mildly panicked.

It's not that we don't have nibbles. We've had a ton of traffic through the house in the last month. For a while there, people were choosing to go with new construction, but we've lowered the price to the point that we're now beneath the tier of people who can afford either our house or new construction. And still, people have complained that there aren't 2 full bathrooms.

No, there aren't. The house is nearly 40 years old. People didn't pee as much back then.

And of course, there's no master suite, and the basement isn't finished, but the kitchen is competely updated, as is the full bath, all the flooring is new and nice -- I went for broke on the flooring because I thought we were going to be there longer. And there are beautiful mature trees font and back and a newly re-sided 2 1/2 car garage, albeit unattached. I don't know. It's not perfect, but it's a darn sight better than it was when we bought it, all mauve and forest green on the inside as it was.

This is the problem with the slowing market: you can suddenly afford houses you never thought you'd be able to touch, but at the same time, you can't get nearly what you thought you could from your old house. I just hope we come out of this without completely draining our savings.