My wife and I looked at houses for over a year before we finally found one we both fell in love with. We looked at probably 20 houses over a year, most of them needed a lot of work and renovations just to move in, but it was within the price range we could afford. Finally, our realtor, just to prove a point, brought us to a home about 40k above our price range to show us that we either needed to accept the fact we had to pay a lower price and plan on renovating a while before we moved in, or cough up the extra money and get into a home that was ready to move in. Long story short, we instantly fell in love with the more expensive home our realtor showed us, we offered 60k under asking since the home was on the market for 2 years and nobody had even made an offer on it--the owner was asking way too much in comparison to the market at the time. After some negotiations back and forth, we got the home we fell in love with for less than any of the cheaper homes we looked at that needed significant work. Sometimes you get lucky I guess.
I love looking at homes too, especially older ones because you get to see some of the most interesting construction what people did to fix things over the years. I never dreaded looking at homes, it was always something new. The worst part I thought was after negotiating the price/contract and the waiting game from the bank and underwriters to get their work done. The seller had one stipulation when we went under contract, that we closed 2 weeks from the day we went under contract. That was an intense two weeks waiting for the bank to get things in line.
Once piece of advise I would give is if you haven't already been pre-approved through a bank, do it. Also, my experience has been a lot better though a local, small bank over a large one. Local banks tend to keep their mortgages instead of selling them off to make a few $$, and they customer services was significantly better than the large banks in our area. And, if you can afford it and your bank offers it, consider doing a bi-weekly mortgage. My wife and I went with a 30 year mortgage, but by paying bi-weekly instead of monthly, the interest was .25% less (which makes a difference over that period of time) and we end up making 1 extra monthly payment a year which means our 30 year loan is actually now a 24 year loan without doing anything.
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