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When looking for an  Oud you should look at a few simple aspects; rich "belly" feeling(body), a smooth action and the sense of enjoyment when playing the instrument. Once you hold it, try to turn the pegs for tuning, which can be hard with low quality pegs (preferable ebony pegs) but this can solved probably with dry soap for releasing hard pegs or choke for determine a loose peg (Maestro Yair Dallal's tip:)
There are lots of colors to the sound of an Oud; the bass stable feeling can appear very fast in high-quality woods, but must not forget that sound will get much better after playing the Oud. Also, high frequencies are a meter of strings and strings life's status. Low action is important for comfort but if it's too low it can buzz. Buzzing can also disappear after a couple of weeks of playing when the instrument starts to balance (strings and action ratio).
Whole nut tree for the body is great and the soundboard is very important... a thin face can give a really nice crispness to the sound (Turkish style) and a thicker face can give more warmth and depth.
The perfect Oud is when you have it all in balanced, but It's not to easy to find and probably won't cost cheep.

But still ,enjoyable Ouds can be found also in low-mid budgets. If you had fun playing it and managed to tune and stabilized the Oud, take it, start practising and have fun...

 

Tarab on you all