Halfsmokes: yeah I agree wholeheartedly with what you just said. Luckily, my realtor has been pretty awesome. She has steered me away from bad neighborhoods and bad purchases, even if they are more expensive.
you got lucky, our guy was good at finding houses exactly at our pre-approved limit (never mind that we wanted to only spend 75% of that). We ended up finding our house on zillow. The realtor came in handy actually helping us negotiate and get repairs made to the house though
