The wife has found nearly a perfect house in exactly the neighborhood she wants to move to. We looked at houses in this neighborhood before, and I have to agree on the neighborhood. The houses we looked at previously were not perfect and were a little out of our price range. This one she found is also out of our price range, but it would not require much in the way of work to get the house usable.
My wife gave a verbal offer to the real estate agent that was well below the asking price, but there's a method for that: we think the house is overpriced, even for that area, and we are kind of giving the person a "safety net" of sorts. Basically telling her "if you can't get your asking price in a comfortable time, we're willing to buy it for less." Have no idea if this strategy will work, but it's worth a try.
If we get this house, and it's still a big if at this point, we will probably be able to get the loans and afford it--it's amazing the kind of loan we qualify for, but it will mean tightening the belts a little. Of course, I have yet to actually see this house, so I am jumping into this site unseen. Not the first time I've done this as the house we bought in Spokane I agreed to buy site unseen. Yes, I obviously trust my wife's judgement on these things.