So dh and I are lucky enough to be able to buy another house sometime soon. We currently own one that's perfectly fine but not exactly what we want for the long-term. And we own in a neighborhood where houses are in demand and rents exceed costs of ownership quite nicely. We think we'll own this house for a long time, but we don't think we'll be living in it the whole time. For now, there's no pressure to move, but we've agreed that we want to live somewhere in the same town in a house that works a bit better for us.
We expect to be in this new house for at least a dozen years, and maybe until we're old and headed to a nursing home in Florida
So, how do we go about finding our dream home without making costly mistakes? Any tips for what to look for or how to do this sensibly?
And does it make sense to search before we intend to buy to get a sense of what's actually out there? Or is that a nuisance waste of time for our realtor?
Dh and I have an appropriate budget and we know about 80% of what features we want in our new house, but we haven't narrowed down the neighborhood yet. And I'm a a little worried that we're going to have a hard time deciding on where we want to be.
I know this is a nice problem to have. Any advice or suggestions as we get started in the house hunt? Thanks!
I think you can be looking to figure out the neighborhood - but that can be done online and going to open houses on your own. Wait to work with a realtor until you have the money and have the neighborhood at least narrowed down.
We are in the same boat. We made three lists: "must haves", "like to haves" and "can't haves". We then started checking for houses online about 6 months in advance of our goal purchase date just to get a feel for the market. We can immediately rule out the houses that have something on our "can't have" list or doesn't have something on our "must have" list. We have a realtor but we only use him to show us houses that we would be ready to offer on. For general market research during the pre-offer stage, we used redfin.com and realtor.com.
We can't decide on an area either but since we're so picky on the house and lot (hard to find large lots in Vegas) we are putting that ahead of location. We have several locations on our "can't have" list but for the most part we are open since we are probably going to go the private school route anyway. My point is that some people will tell you location should be primary, but if you are flexible and open to many parts of town I would say it's perfectly fine to make that secondary. This is especially true if you are looking at a forever house and aren't as concerned with immediate resale value. Neighborhoods will change, who knows what yours will be like in 20+ years. That's our theory, at least.
Like you, we had a good living situation but just wanted to upgrade to our forever home. Not being in a rush has been a blessing and a curse. We haven't had to settle but we have become so picky that nothing seems right for us. We've decided that we are going to buy land and build if we can't find what we like by July.
Another tip--if your assessor and/or recorder's office has public sales data, you can research homes you like and see what they sold for, determine whether they are in foreclosure or behind on the mortgage, check for liens, etc. This info has helped us with negotiations on some of the potential properties we've found.
Wow, thanks! This is great advice. I like the idea of making lists.
We could actually buy very soon, but I think maybe we should look for a couple of months before we buy -I'm afraid that we're going to jump on the first thing that meets most of our needs, and maybe miss some details or opportunities in our rush to get things settled. I'd like to be able to get inside a couple of houses in each of our potential neighborhoods before narrowing down the possibilities, and some of these neighborhoods don't come up for sale very often. I would prefer to wait until the house we want is available rather than settling just because a house is for sale.
Also, building is not an option for us - we want something walkable and urban. But it's a great idea