When we were looking for our house, I had my realtor give me a listing of all the houses in my neighborhood within our price range and parameters. Now you can probably do that yourself on the real estate listing site for your area. (In Houston it's HAR.com). Then I drove by all of them to see if they fit our needs. I narrowed it down and then looked at the ones I liked. It saved some time and effort for everyone.
If you don't mind remodeling, you can sometimes get a bargain on a house that needs work. We bought our house 16 years ago for about $40,000 under market because it was UGLY inside and needed a lot of work. I don't know if people just couldn't visualize how it would look with different paint and no ugly 80's wallpaper or what, but I saw the beautiful old wood panelling (not the cheap kind so many houses have now) and the double crown moldings and knew it could be beautiful. I usually want different colors than are in houses anyway (I seem to be allergic to white walls) so the idea of redoing the walls was normal for me. Of course, 16 years later we are still remodeling here and there but I paid it off in 12 years and can afford to update it when I want to.