Time to burn!

Having never bought a house before I have no idea what we are in for.

The two of us, the OH and I, feel it's time we stopped paying other people's mortgages off for them and started getting our own.  I am fast-approaching the 'three-oh' hill, and I have always had that thought of getting my own house in the back of my mind but always found an excuse not to do so... "My credit rating wont be good enough...", "I don't earn enough for a decent place..." or "I can't get a deposit..." as is the tune for a lot of FTB's these days without that 'silver spoon'.

It's such a minefield of estate agents, websites the estate agents have, filtering the crap from the shite, booking a viewing,  looking at a perfect house in the worst location or finding an affordable house in an unbelievable location that looks like it was built from plans drawn by our 13mo daughter, mortgage advice, surveys, second viewings, contracts, solicitors etc etc... Just getting a viewing for a half decent house is harder than it should be!

We have come up with a few houses to look at and that's all at the moment.  My old man is going to (generously) loan us the deposit and the OH's likewise, of course we have an upper limit so cant just go for a £120k place that 'needs a bit of modern decor', we have to get big with small.  Tomorrow we go and see a 4-bed house for less than £100k - in current climate I'm worried exactly how much work will need doing to it but from the street it looks liveable.

It's not just a modernising project, it's a home, it's hopefully going to be my daughter's first proper home, our first family home.  We want it to be perfect but at the same time something we can stamp our own mark onto.  We aren't expecting to be shot down but lets wait and see... I have a good feeling!