Yesterday, we went driving around looking at the location of houses that looked promising. One was way too close to a high school, but the price was right and the house was open. It was fantastic! At $20k less than the one we offered on, this one had many of the same features plus a lot more. It had the required 4 bedrooms plus hardwood floors, quality fixtures and lots of space. The lot was almost a third of an acre. That is a lot of yard in the city. I actually prefer it to the one we offered on.

We wrote to the Realtor that handled our buying of the last debacle and said we want to see it again. We'll see if he gets back to us. If not, we'll contact the seller. We feel we have enough expertise now to know what to expect.

This time we will buy As Is with a clause that we can back off if it is too expensive to repair. Expecting the seller to repair just results in a shoddy job. Also, I am convinced that we wasted $160 on the radon test. It is so easy to manipulate the results that I'm sure the seller did just that. The average came out at 3.5. At 4 he would have had to repair. It was so suspicious that the levels climbed all day (he works all day) and then dropped dramatically in the evening until about 8 next morning when they climbed again. It seems these tests rely a lot on seller honesty. I'm afraid I don't.