Quandaries and Ponderies: House Hunting Update

House hunting has been an absolute roller coaster.
When my mother and I first came out to Columbus we saw a beautiful brick 5 bedroom home with 10 off-street parking places and a nice backyard, in a good part of town for 270K. Just by the time we got the ball rolling in terms of getting pre-approved, it had sold.
Then my Dad and I found the foreclosing house, and after raising our offer from 90K to 105K the bank countered with 118K. Considering how much work it would take to fix up the place it was decidedly not worth raising the offer, so negotiations stopped there.

My parents and I set out to look for a different house, and we found one that was ideal for a ready-to-move-in house. It was listed for 165K, had four levels, 3 bedrooms, 2 1/2 baths, great kitchen, a nice back deck. We made an offer of 155K hoping to get it for 160K.

"Wow! Pizzaz!" the realtor wrote
for the listing, and we agreed

Right after signing the papers with our realtor my mother and I got in the car and were driving back to my apartment when we get a call from our realtor...the house is "in contract" (which means escrow although there are some technical differences). Someone, the day before, had put in an offer and it was accepted; the sellers' realtor forgot to list that it was no longer for sale. Our realtor was pissed, we were devastated - our spirits were so high having found such a great house, and having it yanked it away was painful.
It took me a few days to recover, and today I went out with the realtor again to look at more houses. But, none of the houses were on par with the one that was snatched away. Too small, too much work/updating necessary, too expensive, etc.
Its interesting to me how emotional house buying can be. Excitement, disgust, amazement, amusement, disappointment.

So, at this point I think that I need to start turning my focus towards renting a place. Its nearly July, and school starts in September. An escrow takes a month to close, which means August. Most people would want to have a place lined up at least a month before school starts, which also means August.
I'll give it another week.