We got it!!!

We found out Monday that we got the house! Er...well...we hope we'll get it. The owners came back with a counter offer including a contingency on the contract. 30 days for them to find a house and have an offer accepted. But, they are covering our closing costs, so we'll be able to put 20% down, avoid mortgage insurance and have some savings left over so that we're not completely broke after settlement. We went back and forth for a long time (okay...like an hour) about the contingency. They will have until the end of July to find something and get their offer accepted on whatever they find. If they don't find anything, they can back out of the contract with us and not sell us the house. Things about the contingency that are a little "eak!" to us include: -The biggest one: We have to give our apartment complex leasing office 60 days notice that we will not be renewing our lease. 60 days before our lease expires happens to fall during the 30 day contingency. There's a chance we could tell our leasing office we're leaving and then lose the house and uh...have nowhere to live after our lease expires. -If the deal falls through, we've lost a month of potential house shopping. -We had hoped to move into the new house while I was still on summer break, so it would be less stressful. This contingency pushes back the settlement date, too. Right now, we'd be moving in the week/weekend before I go back to work. And oh, have I mentioned that I'm also getting a whole new classroom at work? And will have to unpack and move in all of my project supplies (and trust me...art teachers probably have more supplies than any teachers) the same week we're moving into our house. So it will be unpacking my classroom every day until 3pm, and then going home and unpacking my home until 11pm. Things about the contingency that are "oh well, no big deal" to us include: -If we give our leasing office notice that we're leaving, we can go back and tell them it turns out we're NOT leaving as long as they haven't re-rented the apartment yet. I asked the girl in the office how fast our layout (one bedroom with den) tends to go, and she said not very fast, they're having a hard time getting rid of the ones they have. So in the 2 weeks between giving notice and the end of the contingency, we're hoping that they can't re-rent our apartment, just in case. -If need be, we could live with my parents for a while. We would certainly not be out on the street. And while I wouldn't particularly care about living with them, Adam would not be too happy about it. -We won't have much of a chance to shop for houses in July anyway. Either our realtor is busy, or we are busy, or Adam is out of town, or we are on vacation every week or weekend except for the last week in July, at which point the contingency will be expiring. So, losing July, not a biggie. -We really think the couple currently living in the home will not have a problem finding something else. We got the chance to talk to them on Sunday and they were very nice and said that they had found things (we think around 4 houses) in the past that they wanted to buy, but couldn't because they weren't able to get their house sold. So we highly doubt they want this albatross back around their neck and will be pretty motivated to find something. We don't feel that they are out to mess around with us. So, it's a waiting game. Adam and I still have to line up our financing in the next 2 weeks and make sure that all works out. We also have to get a home inspection. We don't actually HAVE to get the inspection until after the contingency expires, but we would like to do it earlier, before we have to tell our leasing office we're outta here, so that if it comes back and the house turns out to be falling to pieces, we can jump ship ASAP. When all this will get accomplished? I have no clue. Adam is in Mexico right now. We haven't even gotten the contract to sign yet. This weekend is a holiday weekend. Adam will be in Kansas next week. The weekend of the 11th/12th Adam is working on his car. We leave on the 12th for the Outer Banks. Adam will be back in North Carolina for work the week of the 19th. I'm hoping that we can do that financing thing on Friday, July 3rd. Which is 2 days away...Damn my husbands traveling.