Home Puchase = Emotional Detachment?

Karyn and I are in the process of purchasing our first home. We have created a list of all the things that we are looking for in a home. We look at the crime stats trying to determine the best neighborhood. I send out twitters asking for home surfing tips. We plug in all kinds of variables into all types of different websites. What I am getting at is that we, like most people searching for a new home; try to make the decision as logical as possible.

Unfortunately all that amounts to little more than a hill of beans. Buying your home is an emotionally driven decision more than anything else. Nearly everything about the actual purchase decision runs contrary to the logical process. You find the house....it smells right, it tastes right....everything about it is right. We thought we found that house yesterday, the first showing was like a first date with a supermodel. The home had gleaming hardwood floors. It had a nice open kitchen, brand new energy efficient windows, a nice deck....the bathroom was gorgeous. We loved it...we had finally found the one. The neighborhood was a little iffy but it was only a few blocks from Pepitos in South Minneapolis.

This was it.

We scheduled a second look to have my father who is an architect take a look at "the bones" of the building. We were so excited about our second date....was she the one? Would we "hook up"? Unfortunately the date started poorly, driving down Chicago from Lake St. we realized that the house was a little closer to the "ghetto" than we had previously realized. Our second date was a disaster. All of the sudden the boarded up house across the street seemed so much closer, the trash pile in the next door neighbors yard seemed so much deeper. Our second date was ruined, this supermodel had no personality.

Luckily we were able to detach ourselves from this relationship in the nick of time. I fear that we are headed down the path towards a LTR with a nice stable little 50's rambler in St. Louis Park....a good steady girl.

In retrospect I should have known it could never work with the girl on Chicago. She was a ten and we are sevens; you don't get a ten on a 7 salary, unless something is wrong with her. The numbers just don't add up.

So tell me how do you stay emotionally detached when purchasing a home or is it even possible?