Possible house?

Now that I got you up to date on our home loan woes in the previous post, I can now move forward.

Despite our last trip to the bank regarding a home loan not going quite as well as we were hoping, we know we're extremely close to getting it soon and so we're still staying positive and hopeful (we're just crossing our fingers and praying that those last 2 items report this month like they should).

Hubby and I have been looking online at houses from time to time though. Originally, hubby was hoping to pick up a foreclosure for $50k or less, as a co-worker at UPS had gotten a decent foreclosed home for under $30k! Unfortunately though, all the ones we could find in areas that weren't terrible seemed to require more work than we wanted to do. We started looking online in the $50-65k range, however most of what we were found were either foreclosures needing A LOT of work or smaller homes than what we want.

We don't want to be too picky and we know it's highly unlikely (although not impossible) to find our ideal dream home as we're just starting out and have a budget to stick to, but at the same time we want to find something we won't mind living in for awhile as we both hate moving if we can help it.

Basically, we'd like a house (preferably a ranch-style) with at least 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms (although we'd settle for 1 or a 1.5 bath if we had to), a 2 car attached garage, a finished basement or one that could be finished someday, a decent backyard (not huge, but not tiny - we'd like to get a dog someday so it needs to be big enough for a dog to run around in as well as room for Jay to play too), and I would really like room for a dishwasher in the kitchen (I am soooo tired of doing dishes by hand - I hate doing dishes almost as much as I hate cleaning the kitchen and bathroom floors or scrubbing the bathtub!). So far, from what we've seen online, the lowest price range for a house like this in decent shape in a decent area of town is in the upper $60k's through the low $80k's, so we're hoping to find something in the low-mid $70k's. Telling the bank our plan there, the bank lady said that with hubby's current incomes that shouldn't be a problem at all and easily doable.

Looking online today, hubby found a few in our neighborhood/area that didn't sound too bad, although he did include the horrid looking "steeple house" as I call it (for the longest time, I thought this house, which is just around the corner from us, was a small church as the front door has a steeple tower with like a bell tower at the top! Apparently it's actually a house and the inside looks decent from the photos online, however I can't stand the steeple entrance! lol... hubby ruled it out though as it doesn't seem to have a garage whatsoever).

Bored at work, I looked a bit too - the house down off the main street I had been keeping my eye on for awhile (it says it's move in ready and basically seems to have everything we'd want in a house) recently got taken over by a different realtor company as the sign out front changed and apparently the last listing got removed and the only one I can find shows the price going from the $104k it had gotten down to (we were hoping it would get in the $80k range soon) up to $128k!! What the?! Why?! Grrrr

I did come across another house though just down the main street from us that I hadn't seen before. Listed for $70k, it's a 3 bedroom, 2 bath ranch with an attached 2 car garage, and while the address is the main street which can be a bit busy, it has a private drive just off the street which is nice. It says it's sold "As Is" which means it's a foreclosure and it mentioned it needs "some" TLC, so I'm curious as to how much work there is on the inside. I drove past it on my way home today and the backyard didn't look big, but it didn't look too tiny either. There's a white wooden fence along the front which looks a bit worn and I wasn't too crazy about, but we can easily do something about that. It had a really nice front porch though! It also has a deck on the back too and I guess a screened in backporch. I thought about getting closer and looking in the windows, as my dad would do, but I'm not sure if someone is still living there or not, as there were blinds and drapes in the windows! If there's someone still living there though, that makes me think it's not in too bad a shape on the inside though! Oh the page online also said it has a private newer well pump too and it's county taxes (which most houses in our neighborhood are) which looked pretty low compared to some of the houses I've looked up online in our area.

We still have about 3 weeks or so until we're going back to the bank, but I'm hoping maybe this one will still be on the market by the time we get approved and that it turns out to be pretty decent on the inside with no major problems.