wasmi.net

Our friends Cheryl and Dave were driving around in the countryside a couple of miles from their own farm, and saw an "old farm house" for sale by owner. So I drove out to check it out. It looked okay, it wasn't as old as I'd wanted, but it was still a nice, vintage house in decent shape. It obviously had been well cared-for, and had some outbuildings.
It didn't give any info on the "for sale" sign except two phone numbers, so I called on it. I wanted to know if the acreage was small enough for us to afford.
The guy who answered said it had been his wife's parents' house, and that they had built it and lived in it until they died. (The wife, who I met today, appears to be in her early to mid fifties, so the house is probably not quite as old as I like.)
Anyway, the man said it had five acres (exactly our target range) and had been for sale for awhile (at a price we could never afford), and he'd recently had to drop the price down considerably (to a price we can afford)due to the economy. "Owner financing is available," he added.
So I set up an appointment for today at noon.
Brian, Derek and I went to see the farm, and we liked its location, the land, and the outbuildings. The house was well-cared for, but hideously ugly on the inside, the victim of having been extensively remodeled in the 1960's and 1980's.
However, the land and the outbuildings (and the location, actually INSIDE the county where Brian works, that's a switch) is perfect.
Unfortunately, we were not the only people to view the property today, though we were the first. We ended up telling the guy that we would gladly give him a down payment if he would consider selling the property on land contract or lease-to-own, but that a conventional mortgage would have to wait until we had closed on the house in Michigan (which has had two offers on it since March, but the mortgage company is dragging their heels about accepting one of them.) We also had to explain to the guy what a short sale was, as he had no idea. He couldn't figure out why our mortgage company had to approve an offer on the Michigan house. He told Brian he'd wait and see what the other prospective buyers could offer before letting us know if we could purchase it.
So we might get beat out on our race to get an affordable farm by one of the other prospective buyers who can actually get a mortgage right this minute.
This makes the second old farm house that meets our specifications that I have found for sale in our county since August of 2008.