Busy, busy, busy

our family has been busy lately. We decided to get out of defence housing and buy a house for us to live in whilst we are in our current location. with the plan of turning it into an investment property when we are posted on. We found an ideal property and made an offer. we would need a loan of 350k for the property as we have a large deposit. the main defence bank knocked us back on the basis of $100 a month in income we didn't have. But another bank came through and gave us pre approval for 350k. Everything was running smoothly and we were soon to be mortgage ee's or so I thought. A couple of days later the bank contacted us and informed us they would only lend us around 250k. the rotten financial crisis has made banks tighten up their lending again. so we are back at looking at houses in a lower price range and not finding what we are looking for. we are also thinking of whether we will be better off buying an investment property instead. but we loose a lot of government and defence benefits if we do this. Deciding what to do with money is a hard thing. bring back the barter system :)