Can't Move Fast Enough

I know it has been a LONG time since I last posted. It's been a rough few weeks as far as the home search goes. Since that last post, we've gone back to looking at townhouses in addition to single family homes. Our local military base is about to go through a big expansion in the next few years and we really think that we can possibly rent a townhouse to military personnel when we are ready to move, thus making money off the house. So, we've been interested in 3 townhouses in the time since I last posted. All of them have gone under contract before we've been able to get our offers in. We figure there are several reasons for this. 1. We stall. Or to be more specific...my husband stalls. I love him very much, but he has never been one to pounce on things...he tends to wait and wait and make sure he really wants to do something. In some situations, this is very smart, but in our current housing market...it seems to be a problem. 2. Our agent is not a full time realtor. He has another 9-5 job, and he can really only get us into houses on weekends and evenings. This makes second visits to houses difficult, and also makes setting aside the time to put an offer in difficult. 3. Our price range is very active. We are in a common price range (up to $300,000) for first time home buyers. And there are a LOT of people in our area who are saying, "the market is so GREAT right now! Buy! Buy! Buy!" So when we take a week or more to get everything together to put in an offer, we miss out because there are a lot of others out there putting in offers too. 4. We want our parents to see any house we are interested in before we buy it. Partly, we just want to hear the opinions of others, especially people who have owned a home before. But the other reason is that Adam's dad is giving us a large portion of our down payment and we want to have his approval on something that he is essentially buying a part of. This creates the problem of coordinating the schedules of our part-time realtor, ourselves, and two sets of parents. This takes time, time in which other people are able to get their offers in and we're not. Oh, and also, it's summer, and summer is a more active house purchasing time of year. It is all very discouraging. There have been 7 houses total now that we have either put in offers on or were planning to put in offers on and we lose them in one way or another. For me, it's extremely frustrating and I have reached a point where I'm no longer excited to look at homes. It feels like slogging through mud. This past weekend we didn't look at anything. The weekend before, however, we went on a marathon, looking at 15 houses. I found myself not wanting to get excited about anything out of fear of getting attached and then losing it. That feeling has only gotten worse. I don't even want to look online anymore. It's very difficult. I keep telling myself it has to turn around, we have to find something. I'm really trying to be optimistic. Adam is now finally starting to feel the smallness of our apartment, and wants to own something of his own. So I'll get online and I'll look for things and we'll keep going.