Houses

So house hunting in CU Land is super frustrating.  Archer and I are still about a week away from getting our place on the market--maybe a bit longer, depending on how long it takes to get carpet installed.  We haven't looked at any places, but I have been checking the MLS website every day.  In the last week 5 houses in the neighborhood that is walking distance to CU and in the FI district we really like have been listed.  Each of them have been in our price range, which tells us they likely need a bit of work, but based on the pictures on the website, they are in good condition.  Because of their price range and their location, we decided to try to see them.  I contacted our agent yesterday, and we've been emailing back and forth since then.  It turns out three of the houses have contracts on them, one is a rental, and the agent for the last one won't return calls.  The three that have contracts on them were listed this week.  So it seems if we really want to be in the neighborhood (and it is one of three we'd like to be in) we'll have to move fast if we see a house in our price range.  This means putting in a contingency offer, which I'm not comfortable with.  So I've just emailed our agent with the list of houses we've compiled over the last 10 days or so.  I've asked her to figure out which ones are still available, and we'll go from there.  Have I mentioned I'm not a fan of hunting for anything?