My wife and I are looking for a house as the rental we are in now is falling apart and the owner is not going to fix it. This is not a great time to buy a house as I am currently unemployed, but there are people we know working hard to help me out of that situation, and any house we buy would be one that we can afford based on my spouse’s income alone (just to be safe).

I hate the process of looking, there is never anything that is “just right” and the trade-offs are hard to think clearly about. Thankfully we lied to the estate agent about how much we are willing to spend; our experience so far is that if you say “we can go up to X” the estate agents tend to show you houses which are strictly greater than X in price!

Plus the best two hits so far were off the market before we got to see them. But one must practice detachment.