I really liked the country house. Junior was sort of noncommittal about it, but I liked its personality.

There were only two little issues with it. It had an older shake roof, which just isn’t done in California any more, and freaks out insurance underwriters. We’d discussed having the seller replace the roof for a higher offer, and she seemed amenable.

The other issue was so small-seeming. We were walking next to the driveway, and I spotted two pieces of pipe coming out of the ground. I asked what those were and the answer was an old farm fuel tank.

Oh, crap. Underground contamination was the core of my career for the previous decade, after all, and I know damn well what kind of trouble you can get into trying to remove a tank. The agents did a little talking between themselves, and the seller thought she had a letter from the local environmental agency giving an exemption for removal due to its size. She wasn’t willing to mess with taking it out, not with an exemption in hand, and I don’t blame her.

Now the question was whether or not we were willing to take the gamble of counting on the exemption holding up for the next twenty years. Environmental regulations change from year to year, after all, and almost always to the more restrictive side. If we were to find a mortgage company willing to lend us the money with that ticking time bomb on the place, and the regs let us keep it for twenty years, what were the odds that we’d be able to sell it without taking it out ourselves?

So that was that for that place. It was a nice house, in a nice area, but not worth the potential risk.

So we went to look at another one this morning. Also on an acre, and it had a nice pool, pretty high ceilings, and a lot of landscaping. Still, it didn’t call to us like the Yuppieville house. We’ve still got an offer in on that one, so we decided to let it ride. We hadn’t seen it for a couple of weeks, so a quick drive by refreshed our excitement for that house. It’s a little more work than one that would come fully landscaped, but at least this way, we can get things how we want them.

So now back to the waiting game. We’re still the only offer and things seems to be going forward on the short sale, so I feel optimistic about things. Even if it falls through, we’ve still seen a few that we think we could be happy in, so we’ll be all right.