wrote ...
Thank you all for your input. I really appreciate it.

As it turns out, the seller wouldn't go lower than 430k. At that
price, the house is still a fair deal, which is why it sold about two
weeks after we looked at it.

We were somewhat relieved that we didn't get the house. 400k would've
put us in the poor house for a while. Instead we started looking in
the 325-375k ballpark. As it turns out, everything under 350k in the
towns we were looking were complete and utter DUMPS! We ended up
finding a gem, though. Its a 1500 sf ranch with a 3/4 finished
basement (walkout, another 600sf of potential living space) on 1.13
acres. We're sacrificing 1 floor, 1 acres and 500sf [against the
house we were originally looking at] but we're at a much more
comfortable 355k purchase price.

Thank goodness for the internet. To get 42 experienced resposes in a
few days really gave me a full breadth of opinions and experience.

Thanks again!

You did what we did when we bought our first house. We had the ranch for
9 years and then sold it when the kids were starting to ride bicycles.
The great appreciation in that time enabled the bigger house, and there
was no financial stress. Good move.
Tomes