I’ve been househunting since I was 7 years old. On second-grade field trips, my best friend, Kristin Martinelli, and I would ride the school bus and “call” the houses we wanted to live in.

I went trick-or-treating as a teenager, just for the excuse to step onto people’s porches and peer through their doorways.

During college, I would drive through my favorite neighborhoods between work and school to remind myself why I was working so hard.

My favorite thing has always been to walk at dusk. I go just as the sun starts to set, when people have turned their lights on but not yet closed their drapes, so I can see inside better. It’s not as creepy as it sounds. The warm glow makes everything look like a Kinkade painting.

But, now I am actually, honest-to-goodness ready to buy. And I’m finding out that dreaming about choosing a house and really, officially looking for one are two completely different stories.

Your real estate agent (if she’s any good) snatches off your rose-colored glasses and backs over them in her BMW. You start to understand the value of blown-in insulation, a dry basement and a new boiler. Big, luxurious porches and country homes with cozy fireplaces get trumped by ancient wiring, galvanized plumbing and interstate proximity.

I’ve been blowing kisses at old, creaky houses my whole life. Now, just as I thought I was about to get my hands on one, the reality of heating bills and renovation costs pulls them further out of my reach.

Househunting has much less to do with the “house” than I ever expected. It has a lot more to do with “hunting”— carving out a territory, stalking and analyzing the target, and going in for the kill.

Things were a whole lot easier—and more fun—when school districts, taxes and purchase price weren’t in the picture.

Who would have thought searching house listings—my favorite time suck— would become work?

It doesn’t help that any house worth buying, that is priced right and in the right location, is snapped up in a heartbeat. It’s enough to make you wish for a good old-fashioned, Florida-style housing market crash. (Not really.)

Whoever said it is a buyer’s market is not talking about Buffalo. In fact, I’d like to personally implore every hesitant Western New Yorker with a nice house to please put that sucker up for sale. Consider yourself begged.

We on the hunt must watch the ads like hawks for new listings. We wake from a sound sleep to obsessively click through HomefinderExtra.com just one more time. Throw in the pressure of trying to meet the Dec. 1 deadline for Obama’s $8,000 first-time home buyer credit and you can toss any leftover romantic notions out the window.

Of course, everyone keeps assuring me that my perfect house is out there. They say it’s worth the wait (and stress and binge eating and tears).

I try to remember that as I endure day after day of my renter’s life and the pounding feet, bad drum solos and yapping dog overhead that come with it.

I know I’ll find my home sweet home. Until then, keep your curtains open for me.