Is this the one?

It took us almost two years to locate a property that was close enough to what we wanted. By than we have physically visited close to 30 places.

Those 30 were chosen after collecting the information from many listings and deciding that they are "close enough" for us to take the time and go see them.

We put an offer and thus started chapter 2 of the journey. Inspection, appraisal, negotiating. Going over the fine details will always reveal things that you did not know and should have. Things that you are not happy about. Patience and caution are the name of the game. Talking through the real estate agent make the process even more complicated and time consuming so if you can communicate directly with the seller/s this might ease the process. It took us almost 4 month to complete the transaction. There were tense moments till the very end. Moments in which we thought of calling the whole thing off. I am glad now that we did not.