Leah and I had a plan. We would build a house, and then sell our current house. Simple, right? Of course we didn’t expect the details to be quite so simple. Building a house is a complicated process and, as we are learning, more expensive than we might have anticipated.

We fully expected the sale of our house to be a fairly long process. Rome is not a booming real estate market under the best of circumstances, and selling a house this far from town is not the best of circumstances. Not everyone wants to live up here. A surprise, I know. We didn’t really know how long it might take to sell, but I was expecting months rather than weeks.

And then last week we got a call from a family planning to build a house below us, between our property and neighbor John’s. They had sold their house and rented a nearby house through the real estate broker who handled the sale of my parents’ house and our purchase of the property we are now building on. He told these people that we planned to sell our house, and maybe they should take a look at it.

So, on Sunday, they did. It turns out that the house they have been planning to build looks a lot like ours. They liked what they saw, and left saying that they were going to hold off on seeking more estimates from contractors to build their new house.

They seemed genuinely interested and we all agreed that it would be a good thing for everyone if we could reach an agreement. As of now, we haven’t sold and they haven’t bought. It might not happen. All sorts of things could happen instead. But wouldn’t it be nice?

How’s that for a coincidence?