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Old 08-10-2011, 07:09 PM
 
5,680 posts, read 10,318,205 times
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When we bought our first house in 1988, it was the only one we even looked at. We just lucked into a fantastic deal, and the price was what sold the place. Bonus that it had all sorts of extras, but at the price, we'd have taken a lot less and still would have been content.

When we bought our second (and current) home in 1999, we probably looked at between 25 and 30 homes. We had just moved back to the Midwest and we weren't as familiar with the city as we are now, so it took a bit more research. In addition, home prices in our current city of Madison, Wisconsin were more than double the price of a comparable home in McAllen, Texas, where we had lived before returning back up north, plus we wanted to find something at a price we could pay off in 15 years rather than in 30, so that narrowed the list of possibilities considerably.

As best I recall, the Realtor who assisted us in purchasing this place did a good job of showing us homes that met our criteria, with the exception of price. He never tried to push a 2-bedroom place on us, nor did he try to get us to look at a home in a different high school district from the one we wanted, but he kept showing us places that were either right at the top or a bit over our stated comfort zone for price. Can't blame him for that, of course, since his income is directly tied to the price of the homes he sells, but it did get a little tiresome after a while. He was probably disappointed when we settled on a house that was right about in the middle of our target range rather than at the upper end, but eh, that's his problem, not ours.
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Old 08-11-2011, 04:40 AM
 
82 posts, read 286,422 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Ted Bear View Post
When you went out to look at homes, were the homes selected to visit representative of your criteria...such that, for instance, if you wanted a two car garage, did the realtor take you to any homes with a one car garage because 'this place is just SO cute'?

Would love to hear your experience and opinions.
As an agent, I try my hardest to refine the search according to my client's desires as best I can given the parameters in our local MLS. However, I wish I could tell you the number of clients that have given me a wish list and then changed it on the fly depending on a house they drove by, saw online or came over from me. In other words, I don't always narrow the search down quite as specifically because buyer's change their minds so often.

Have my fellow realtors experienced this as well?
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Old 08-11-2011, 07:28 AM
 
675 posts, read 1,813,152 times
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May I ask, if the buyer's agent is not local resident, how does he/she knows the area, i.e shortcut roads, neighborhood etc ...?
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Old 08-11-2011, 07:38 AM
 
Location: El Dorado Hills, CA
3,720 posts, read 9,976,768 times
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We looked at about 100 back in 2008. We did make six offers though. 4 on Short Sales (never heard back from the lenders), 1 foreclosure we didn't get, and 1 we did.
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Old 08-11-2011, 08:06 AM
 
45 posts, read 432,756 times
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we started house hunting early May this year and looked at about 10 that was listed with MLS, prices ranging $450k to $520k none of them were shortsale/foreclosure cuz I tried to avoid the hassle with shortsale.. all of the houses as soon as we walk in , we didn't have a feel for it. and one day I drove around and saw a home listed FSBO and called the owner and came by to see and as soon as we walk inside the house, it has that warm feeling like it's our home and the seller price was alot less than all other house we've looked at.. and we are scheduled to close tomorrow at 11am.
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Old 08-11-2011, 09:27 AM
 
Location: Burbs near Philly
191 posts, read 944,485 times
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So far I've looked at about 7 homes and I intend on looking at about 4 more tonight. Hopefully I'll be putting in an offer in the next week or two. I've found some great ones! It's a buyer's market right now so nothing's selling that fast which is great for me and prices are so low for great homes.
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Old 08-11-2011, 11:55 AM
 
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We probably looked at something like 50 homes total over the course of the last 2 years. The biggest problem with most of the homes was not the home itself, but the fact that is was located in a not so nice area or part of town. We live in Silicon Valley, CA, one of the most expensive housing markets in the US. $250k is the price range we were looking in and that doesn't buy you much out here. I couldn't bring myself to willingly live in any of those places we could afford to buy.

Back in March 2011 we found a pretty good place we were happy with. It wasn't the one, but it was a lot better than what we had been seeing. Well, deal fell through 3 days from closing and we didn't get it. We were totally bummed.

Looked around for a couple more months, and we finally found the one! It was priced at the very edge of our upper limit on price range, but for 'the one' we were ecstatic and more than happy to get it. Well technically its not ours yet, we're signing closing docs at the title company tomorrow, wish us luck this one closes!

Now I am super glad we looked at all those properties and held out for 'the one'. No, looking at 50+ properties was not fun, it was depressing at times even with the deflated prices.

We probably looked at literally hundreds online.
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Old 08-11-2011, 12:29 PM
 
Location: Nebraska
1,481 posts, read 1,374,040 times
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I think we looked at 4-5 places. We didn't use a realtor. We bought in 2000. We were a cash buyer. The house we choose didn't have everything that we wanted. The owner had inherited the house and was trying to relocate and was happy to have a cash buyer.
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Old 08-11-2011, 03:33 PM
 
4,567 posts, read 10,625,503 times
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First house we bought we looked at 100 or so by ourselves. Drove by, checked out neighborhood, or looked in windows if it was vacant. I only call the realtor when I'm more serious about looking inside. Of those 100, I looked inside with a realtor in about 4 of them.

Basically, I do my homework first. I dont need to set up appointments with a realtor to drag me all around town to houses I'm not going to buy. Its best to look at them yourself first, then setup an appointment if your still interested.
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Old 08-11-2011, 03:47 PM
 
7,329 posts, read 16,384,273 times
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Our first house, pre-internet, was the 5th one we saw.
This time, I started looking at houses on the internet long before we were ready to buy one and move. As we got closer to making the decision to move, we started to do occasional drive-bys. Usually these resulted in a "meh" kind of response when we saw them "in person". A house we really liked got us serious about actually looking at houses with a realtor. We talked ourselves out of that one before we called her, but did a drive by of one we loved on sight, went with a realtor to see it inside and made an offer the next day.
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