OK, here it goes.....

In the past week, Thomas and I have....

~Viewed a house for sale in my parents neighborhood
~Talked to 3 mortgage companies about loans they are currently offering
~Got pre-approved for a 203KS loan (basically a construction loan)
~Created and signed a contract for above mentioned home
~Set up a meeting with the realtor to put our house on the market.

That was as of Friday....then by a weird twist of fate on Saturday, my mom was coming over to watch the baby while Thomas and I cleaned out the basement in order to start getting the house market ready, but she ran into an old family friend who's daughter used to be my hairdresser (she did the best colors in town AND my look for my wedding...anyways). My mom mentioned that we were selling our house, and it just so happens that the daughter and her girlfriend (who live about 2 minutes from here in a rental townhome) just started looking for a house to buy in the area. So, she called her daughter and her and her girlfriend came over to look at the house. Basically they love it, we are asking the lowest price around here, and they are going to the mortgage company to get their pre-approval on tuesday when the banks open back up. All of this happend before the realtor called to put our house on the market.

So, if they do definitely want the house (and get the loan), we are going to list it as a FSBO since WE technically sold the house without the realtor getting involved, and just pay him a flat fee (I think it is 2% in VA) to handle the legal part of things such as a contract and dealing with the lawyer verses the 6% to have him actually list the house in the MLS system. Plus, this gives me the availability to accept a little lower price from a friend because I will still net the same amount without the agent cut coming into play.