Home Ownership

So, we own our current home outright.  We've got an almost 14 year old son.  What do we do?  We decide to buy a bigger house.  He'll be going to college (hopefully) in 4 years, although may stay 2 years at local community college.  So at the most, he'll move out in 6 years. Still, we want a bigger place.  We have no room now for guests to stay, and our living room is just awkwardly shaped for visitors.  We only have seating for 4 people, and there are 3 of us who live here.

Of course, we had to do things the hard way.  We put an offer on a house that was a short sale.  Took them 2.5 months to agree to it (although, that offer had been proffered by someone else, accepted by the bank, but fell through during escrow the week before we made our offer).  Now the bank wants it closed in 30 days.  Fortunately, our mortgage broker is doing their level best to get it done, as well as our Realtor.  We might actually make it.  If we don't, $75/day penalty issued by the bank currently holding the mortgage.  Sheesh. 

We'll need to do a little work on the new place before we move in - paint touch-ups, some cabinet cleaning.  The tile counters are dated, but we won't be doing anything with those for a long time, due to cost and overall laziness. 

Then comes the hard part - cleaning out all our crap, throwing away 15 years of stuff, and moving. Amazingly enough, we've had several people offer to help us move.  They just volunteered.  I thought that was awesome.