Thank you for all the kind words

hyeah: Needless to say we are quite excited about this.
To answer a few ?'s about the real estate market here... and to give you an idea of what we have been through to get this house.
We have been looking for 9 months and have placed 17 offers on different houses and each offer requires mounds of paperwork and document signing. I would say that at least the last 6 offers had a min of 30 offers to compete with and we have heard of some area's where there have been upwards of 80 offers per house. The USA govt has given a first time home buyer incentive of 8k as free money that is based as a tax credit to encourage new home owners to get off the fence. This program has met with overwhelming success here in the Bay area, but there are many investors that are walking in with cash which makes it very hard to compete.
In the county of San Francisco I would say that home prices have not dropped as much as anywhere else and you still can't touch a fixer house for less than 4-500k.
Our house is in the East Bay and is not far from Berkeley. The properties surrounding San Francisco have seen the largest drop in price sometimes 2-300k on homes lower than 500k.
I don't mind sharing, a similar house in our neighborhood was priced at around 425k in 2005 (at the height of the Market) and we were able to purchase our house for 289K, it was not a foreclosure but a private sale.
I think the bottom of the market is just about there and we are seeing prices start to turn around a little. The Banks are trickling these foreclosures out as slowly as they can to incite bidding wars as much as possible, and while there are many good bargains most of these home sell within a few days or so and it is extremely competitive.
The banks are smart and usually will put a house for sale well below Market value to incite as many offers as possible. One of the biggest problems for people with loans instead of cash is the fact that many homes are not appraising for as high as the purchase price. This means that the buyer has to either re-negotiate a better price or they have to come up with the difference as the Banks won't lend higher than the appraisal price and so we are seeing many sales fall though and houses going back on the Market. The lending environment for the normal guy is tough because the Banks have completely tightened up the lending standards and one has to have excellent credit and be able to show detailed documentation for everything. Many people that have been pre-approved by the Banks for a loan yet often find the loans are still falling through when it comes time to make a purchase. This is why cash is King, because people with cash do not need to worry about any Bank restrictions or appraisals and can pay whatever they want to for a house, and this is why it is hard for people with standard loans.
The problem in terms of the USA overall is that many area's are still struggling with their Real Estate Markets and are not seeing the kind of movement we are. California has the highest unemployment rate of around 10% atm, it is a virtually bankrupt State and has cut funding to about every service available and yet our population is still seeing growth.