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My husband and I, along with my mother-in-law, only looked at six houses on a Saturday with our realtor. We fell in love with the last house we saw that day. It felt like "home" to us! However, I had been looking online off and on for 2-3 years, and we drove by four other houses on a previous weekend and ruled them all out solely based on location. We are staying in the same county where we currently live, only we are moving to another municipality. I grew up in the town where we currently live, so I am pretty familiar with the area.
We're set to close on December 1, although the mortgage people would like for us to close earlier, like on November 24-25. Everything is pretty much ready to go, although I don't know that the sellers will agree to an earlier closing.
Well, I found a realtor and have been pre-approved for a mortgage.
Sunday we look at our first house. I fear falling in love too soon.
I wonder what the "average " number of houses people look at when buying? What was it like for you?
The Realtor will need to know more than your pre-approval amount to help you find the right house for you. You, likewise, will need to think through and prioritize your buying criteria, in order to know whether any given house meets your criteria.
'House basics' are important: size, age, layout, condition of major expense items (roof, foundation, HVAC, etc), amenities, bedrooms/bathrooms, upgrade needs/cost, etc. Equally important issues are LOCATION, distance from work, schools/(children?), resale value, where house fits relative to other houses in the neighborhood, traffic, tax/insurance issues, etc.
A good approach that will help maintain your objectivity, is to list all of these things by their relative importance to you. Then, grade each house on a 1-5 scale as you view them. It will also help to take pictures that will help jog your memory. Before making an offer, check-out actual sales prices in any given neighborhood/area through your County Tax Assessor's office.
I've been doing my homework. I have lists of must have, like to have and really don't want and I've told our agent.
The first house we are seeing seems to fit our lists pretty well. I'm not sure the location will be right. I also think it is a bit over priced compared to recent sales in the same neighborhood. It's been on the market for more than three months, which means I'm probably right.
But it will be a good experience for both us and the agent to get a feel for what we are about.
I think a lot depends upon:
your personality - are you very organized? do you suffer from analysis paralysis?
your age - it is easier when you are older as you have seen more of what you like and don't like
For my first house, we had a short list of MUST HAVEs:
fireplace, hardwood floors, basement, garage, max price of $55K (1979 dollars)
That helped the agent winnow the houses to be shown to us. we looked at 8 houses.
For us, at the time, school systems were not important. It turned out that we bought in a great town for schools anyway.
Second and third houses were new builds, tract and we bought with a sense of: we will move in a few years (job relocation, children). In both cases, the prices were 1.2x gross income so we did not spend a lot of time analyzing. We looked at 3 houses.
The fourth house was a bungalow and we popped the top. We spent more on the pop than the purchase. In this case, LOCATION was everything. We chose the neighborhood, Bonnie Brae | The best neighborhood in Denver, and then walked every block twice before narrowing it down to 4 blocks. So, in this case, two buying criteria: location and architect approval. We looked a 5 houses.
Our current house is one side of a duplex. We wanted a duplex for easier maintenance, lower price (our goal was to downsize our mortgage to zero$), smaller size. Our criteria were: duplex, in the City & County of Denver. Duplexes are rare and limited to a few locations. Two locations (Stapleton and Lowery) were rejected as being too "Pleasantville". That left West Highland (too expensive) and Berkeley (just right, said Goldilocks). So, Berkeley it was. We looked at 5 houses. Saw the equivalent of our house (3473 West Moncrieff Place, Denver, CO) and made the buying decision within 30 seconds of walking in the front door.
My bottom line advice is:
1. Make a short list of required attributes.
2. Look at enough houses so you are comfortable with evaluating them.
3. Don't let anyone rush you. This is a big deal.
4. Worry about location and building infrastructure. Don't worry about paint, wallpaper, sinks, etc.
Location: Mokelumne Hill, CA & El Pescadero, BCS MX.
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We saw 2. Knew the second one was it within 30 seconds of walking in the door. First home (first wife) we looked at the 4 models and bought one within 3 hours.
We looked for over a year, about 40 houses before we found a house we liked in an area we were determined to live in. Take your time. This is a huge purchase you're making.
We had a crummy RE agent at the time too. We wanted a detached home. She'd bring us to attached houses that we knew we wouldn't be interested in but she kept insisting that's all we could afford. Being newbies to home buying we'd go along with what she wanted to show us but none of them ever appealed to us enough to make an offer.
Then we saw a sign, a FSBO sign, detached home, exactly what we were looking for, made an offer which was accepted and we moved in.
DMenscha...I 'knew' this house was mine the minute I walked in the door..
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It depends.
