There are nice looking Tripacers advertised for under $20,000 with similar specs to a 172. Maybe you should widen your horizons a bit. And older 172s are available for reasonable prices.
That said buying a used airplane is difficult. It takes a lot of experience to figure out what is important and what is not. You need to get a prebuy inspection done by a competent and experienced mechanic. Most used planes are 40 or more years old. In real dollars airplanes are not much more expensive than they were 30 years ago but the fleet has aged since that time so you now need to be even more careful.
Before buying a “milkstool,” I’d look into homebuilding.