You sound just like me. I just bough a townhome in Leesburg, VA for $300k. It's a little smaller than I would like, but it will work just fine for the less than 5 years I hope to be living there. I've already got a list a mile long of things I'd like to improve in the house. I've been waiting a long time to have my own house to work on, so I don't see the house's shortcomings as that much of a bad thing. They're all fixable.