Clearly

We are not supposed to be buying a house right now

We have now bid on more houses than I can keep track of and gotten none of them.

They all have gone to cash buyers.

The most recent was a really nice 5 (yes 5!) bedroom house with swingset, fenced yard at the end of a cul de sac. I wanted it even more than the fenced driveway house since it needed far less work- paint and carpet as opposed to putting windows back in and walls back up.

And to add insult to injury, we have heard stories of people who short sale their houses after transferring all their assets to their kids' names and then buy a house.. for cash.. in their kid's name.

*sigh*

And if finding someone who was willing to rent to us with 4 kids was hard, I can only imagine how hard it will be to find someone who will rent to us with 4 kids and a dog.

Criteria:
to pay $500 less/month than we are currently paying in rent (yes. I know some people pay $500 total for rent a month. They don't live in CA)
Does not smell like cat
No mold issues
No other smell issues
Non-barrio neighborhood

is that too much to ask???