[update 2009-05-27] The seller basically wants to back out of the contract. Short version is she is on disability and thinks she can get her bank to modify her loan to let her keep the house (which she supposedly can't afford otherwise.) Technically we could take her to court and force her to sell but litigation is expensive and stressfull and the court might side against us purely because we would be litigating against a cancer patient (even though the house has been for sale for 200+ days and she got a great price.) Not worth doing that and not very nice to try and take someones house who doesn't want to sell. Thus we will rescind the contract but keep the right of first refusal if she can't work out a deal with her bank and has to sell anyway. Given all the hoops we've jumped through one would hope we get a better price if that happens, but not knowing the woman it's hard to say if she would be as nice to us as we have been to her. Anyway back to looking.

[update 2009-06-06] Ok the crazy real estate process continues to astound and amaze. The sellers of the fairfax place that backed out before are now wanting to sell, we haven't found anything we like enough to buy since so we are back on for the purchase. Home inspections are scheduled and the escrow place has the first 1% or so. Pretty exciting, though I'm going to try to hold off being too excited until we actually get the keys. Not sure if the loan adjustment falling through or the divorce is behind them selling but either way probably not a good situation for them. Good for us, and maybe they can take a tiny bit of solice in knowing they are selling to nice people who were trying to help them out with the rescinded contract. Of course our being nice has resulted in interest rates going up 3/4s of a point which is pretty lame, but maybe we can lock in on a low day and it won't be quite the tens of thousands of dollars difference in total cost over the life of the loan. Regardless interesting times, hopefully we will move moving mid July.