Good evening, everyone.
Well, my wife and I just finished (2-3 months ago) paying off our cards and getting our FICO scores up - I'm ~678 and she's ~739. We are planning a move from Los Angeles to Phoenix soon, as our oldest starts school next year, and we want to be near family again, as well.
Here's the rub... Now that we've got our debt down (only one car left and her student loans), we were planning on saving for the next 18 months until we move, so that we could have a sizable down. Of course, with the bad timing we always have, we found the perfect house in Chandler (Phoenix suburb). The house is a steal - 2 years old, has dropped from $740k when built to $420k (foreclosure), so we're thinking that we should maybe grab it now while we can.
We currently make $202k a year together. We have a total of $24k of credit line ($8k for me, $16k for her, two cards each), with zero balances because we pay them off every month, but three of the four are relatively new. Again, we weren't planning on buying for 18 months, so we added some cards to rebuild our credit.
Additionally, my wife is a faculty member at a local university, so we currently live rent free (faculty apartment).
So with all that said (sorry for the long build-up), would it be possible for us to buy a home out of state, with the credit scores that we have, the new cards that we have, and with our current income, would we be able to get a loan with very little down (since we won't have 18 months to save)? Also, would we be able to get a loan if we weren't planning on moving right this moment? Since we live rent free, there isn't a driver for us to move as quickly, but we want to secure the house. It sounds backwards, but we want to get the house first, then find jobs out there, then move. Both of our professions are hot commodities, so finding jobs won't be a problem, but we're fearful that this house will be gone by the time we line up our ducks.
Sorry for the long message; thanks for any advise you can give. 
Ryan
