Disappointment

Well, we had some disappointing news this last week. Our offer on the house in Minnesota is starting to fall through. We had put a contingency into our purchase agreement stating that the current owners needed to get an ammendment to the bylaws of the association stating that more than 3 people can live in the house we are wanting to buy. They held a vote last week and unfortunately, the ammendment didn't pass - in fact, it missed by 1 vote. So we are very frustrated right now (as are the sellers) and are a bit unsure of where to go from here.

We have the option of going through with the offer and just hoping they will get the vote passed eventually (we were told we could get a waiver in the meantime to have more kids, but they don't want to change the ammendment at this time). The downfall of this, is that if they never end up passing the vote, then we deal with the same issue all over again when it comes time for us to sell. Or we could pull out of our offer completely and start looking for a new house. The third option is that we could keep our offer standing the way it reads with the contingency in hopes that they will pass the vote at their annual association meeting in May. The problem with this option is that if they don't end up passing the vote in May, we lose out on the $8000 tax credit (which let's face it - that's a huge chunk of change).

We really love the house and have said from the beginning that if it weren't for the association, we would have no hesitation towards this house. After this kind of a problem, we wonder whether we should even buy into an association like this. Very frustrating...
If anyone has any advice, we're all ears!