How long does it take to buy a house?

Wait until you get back.

The process is this...

1) You find a house

2) you bid on it and wait for the seller to accept your offer

3) in a perfect world, you get your acceptance in 2-3 days, in a REAL world, you get it in 1-2 weeks, maybe longer.

4) It takes 30 days to close escrow for a regular transaction. Sometimes sooner, sometimes longer.

5) You then move and have tons of boxes to move around and your home is in a state of disarray. It'll be on your mind BIG time while you're overseas.

So, my advice is to wait.

BTW, with 16K, how much of a house were you looking to get? Most loans require 10% down payment these days so that's a 160K house. Don't forget about closing costs which is usually upwards of about 3% of the house price.

If I were you I would wait until I got back. It took 30 days to get our house finalized and I can tell you I spent every day of my lunch break on the phone with someone answering questions and faxing things. So many things were faxed, e-mailed and Fed Exed it was crazy. Unless you will have office capabilities where you are going and time to fool with this then I would wait.

30 days is the norm. If you pay in full it only takes a week or so but most of us can't do that it. It is the loan process that takes so long.

It varies from situation to situation. Ours is taking 3 months but that is only because the sellers negotiated to have more time to find a new place.

If I were you, I would wait until you get back.

wait until you get back, then it should take about 4 weeks to go thru all the steps.