House buying-# houses you looked @ in person?

[kwynn]

Did you get discouraged? Did you end up changing your budget?

I have a lot of houses I'm trying to see. How many did you see in person?

Is there any way to narrow down the choices online without going to so many?

I'm afraid to pass up something good so I'm being really open.

There's too many houses for me to see though, and some are just really, really overpriced. Any tips to narrow this down before I get there?

The reason I have so much to see is that I have no kids (school district is not a huge concern to me), I work from home (so I can go to any number of places in the city if the price is right), and I'm willing to do some work on a house, so I have trouble eliminating anything. I'm not that picky.

Lastly, off-topic, if you found an immaculately-cared for home but it was *covered,* every room, with wallpaper...would you consider it or is that a heck no?

[Deleted]

Oh Lord, we saw maybe 50 houses in person, then we ended up building. We nearly doubled our budget, which I would not recommend.

I could deal with wallpaper, so long as the walls underneath are ok. Putting up drywall is the shittiest DIY job I can ever imagine doing again.

[pacificrules]

For me, once we started looking, I was better able to narrow them down online. I didn't really know what I was looking for when I started, so seeing the options helped me clarify my priorities and must-haves. We probably ended up looking at 20ish houses in person. 

Wallpaper would NOT be a 'heck no' if I was willing to do some work (which it sounds like you are).

[kwynn]

I was like "Oh, I can fix this" with the wallpaper but it's every single room including the bathrooms. Seriously. And then I started worrying about the wall underneath.

Okay, I don't feel bad saying that I might look at 60+ houses. I have heard other ppl say they looked at 5 or 10.

[jerseyjaybird]

I saw probably 40-50 over two days (I was in town for a relocation/house-hunting trip). On the third day, I revisited my top 5 as well as an additional 2 that my realtor had just found. The same day, I made an offer on one of the "new" ones. My realtor was amazing at reading my body language and listening to me, and after a day or so she added and subtracted houses that she'd already seen to/from the list. She had my style absolutely nailed, and that helped. I had a small number of "musts" on my list (2+ bedrooms, 1.5+ bathrooms, yard, basement) and a million "wants" (hardwood floors, a fenced yard, a fireplace . . . ). Can you eliminate any from your list based only on your wants? Also, how long are you expecting to live there? Is resale value a consideration? If so, being in a good school district would be a big plus.

[gt7301b]

We looked at 30+ houses and yes we did get discouraged.  I think you just have to go see a few and you will start to figure out what is really important to you.  After looking at a lot of homes that were loser in and not that cute we increased our budget by about 50K and expanded our search radius.  We eventually found our current neighborhood and ended up putting in four offers in that subdivision.

[simpsongal]

10-15? probably 1000+ online. You should be able to tell the big things from listings (e.g., number of bedrooms/bath, location, school district, upgrades, etc.)

Check out the google maps street view too - that can help you see a more real world view of the house and the surrounding neighborhood.

[kwynn]

Jan 28, 2013 15:09:40 GMT -5 jerseyjaybird said:

I saw probably 40-50 over two days (I was in town for a relocation/house-hunting trip). On the third day, I revisited my top 5 as well as an additional 2 that my realtor had just found. The same day, I made an offer on one of the "new" ones. My realtor was amazing at reading my body language and listening to me, and after a day or so she added and subtracted houses that she'd already seen to/from the list. She had my style absolutely nailed, and that helped. I had a small number of "musts" on my list (2+ bedrooms, 1.5+ bathrooms, yard, basement) and a million "wants" (hardwood floors, a fenced yard, a fireplace . . . ). Can you eliminate any from your list based only on your wants? Also, how long are you expecting to live there? Is resale value a consideration? If so, being in a good school district would be a big plus.

I can't eliminate based on my wants because I only have 10 things I want or need in a home. They are (in order):

1. Curb Appeal - no flat fronts, no awkwardness, a great looking exterior, no weird windows/placement, no crappy back view
2. Style - old style houses preferred with old details inside
3. Location - prefer XYZ County, has to be on a non-crowded street, no crappy neighbors

4. 1.5 actual bathrooms - one preferred on main living area and one on bedroom level
5. Updating - kitchen and bathroom are not total gut jobs
6. General Condition - no major issues readily apparent such as sloped floors, bad roof, something needs replaced right now

7. Decor - some rooms are livable as-is (not every room needs paint, carpet/floor, light fixtures replaced)
8. Layout - rooms are sized appropriately, no weird/awkward spaces
9. Price - in range relative to amount of work needed/how much we like it

10. Gut feeling

I'll take 7 out of 10.

[Susie]

Jan 28, 2013 15:02:18 GMT -5 kwynn said:

Did you get discouraged? Yes Did you end up changing your budget?  Yes

I have a lot of houses I'm trying to see. How many did you see in person?  21 houses, 26 showings

Is there any way to narrow down the choices online without going to so many?  We got really good at it about halfway through.

I'm afraid to pass up something good so I'm being really open.  There's a balance to strike.  You learn to recognize the things that end up being dealbreakers in listings.  It also really helps if the neighborhoods are in google maps street view.  You can "see" the neighborhood enough to eliminate some.

There's too many houses for me to see though, and some are just really, really overpriced. Any tips to narrow this down before I get there?  I'm not sure what I've got that's generalizable, but definitely try Google Street view. 

The reason I have so much to see is that I have no kids (school district is not a huge concern to me), I work from home (so I can go to any number of places in the city if the price is right), and I'm willing to do some work on a house, so I have trouble eliminating anything. I'm not that picky.   That should help you eliminate the ones that are already updated.  Those likely aren't the best bang for your buck.

Lastly, off-topic, if you found an immaculately-cared for home but it was *covered,* every room, with wallpaper...would you consider it or is that a heck no?  I'd consider it.  I'd offer less, but I'd consider it -  especially if ANY of it was something I could live with for a few months or a year.  You can't do everything immediately.  Fortunately our house only had it in 3 rooms.

[jenjen]

We looked at 12-15 I believe but we were on a time crunch (had sold our house and needed a new one). We bought with wallpaper everywhere. I think all but 2 ceilings were wallpapered and then painted over. Every room had wallpaper and or a border. Some was already painted over.

We had 3 layers in the hall over plaster. I did remove about half of the wallpaper... most came off pretty easily. We drywalled over the hallway and will completely gut the bathrooms and master bedroom so I left those for now. I did just paint directly over the wallpaper in the other bedrooms. I don't think it's going to come off easily there.

[Deleted]

We saw LOTS! Don't worry about that.

If the wallpaper house meets your needs in most (or all) of the other categories, go for it! You'll probably get a great deal because most people are afraid of the hard work of removing the wallpaper. An inspection should alleviate concerns about the walls underneath the paper.

[jerseyjaybird]

Gut feeling is what worked for me. I loved my house from the second I stepped inside. Two years later, and I'm still crazy about it every time I walk through the door. Good luck!

[stephm0188]

We saw a grand total of three. All three we were prepared to purchase.

The first was new construction in a somewhat cookie cutter neighborhood. I balked when I was told I couldn't get white cabinets. While we were waiting to hear from the sales rep about whether or not they'd get my cabinets for me, we visited an open house.

Fell in love with the second house. It was bigger and cheaper than the first house. It had everything on my list. We made an offer.

The inspection came back somewhat questionable, so we looked at another house while waiting to hear if the sellers were going to make the repairs we wanted or not. It was a smaller house that needed a lot of paint, but it had good bones and a nice layout, plus the neighborhood backed up to a park. We would have made an offer on that one if the sellers had refused our list.

To be fair, I looked at a lot of houses online over the course of a year and knew exactly what I did and did not want.

[kaylie]

Did you get discouraged/change your budget?
We ended up raising our max by about 20%, but still ended up staying on budget. Our discouragement was more based on how fast inventory was moving and the fact that we kept losing bidding wars.

How many did you see in person? Probably ~50

Is there any way to narrow down the choices online without going to so many?
When we first started looking I wanted to see everything, but after a couple of outings to see them I got better at narrowing it down because there were things I could see would be deal breakers just by looking online.

How long are you planning to stay in this house? Even if school district isn't important to you, it's good for resale. Houses in the crappy school districts where we are take a lot longer to sell, but I know we could get rid of ours for a fair price in a matter of days.

The other thing to consider is how easy or hard will it be to get what you want in your price range. If you'll have tons of options, then I would sit down and think really hard about what your 'perfect' house is. I would also screen everything online and only look at the houses in person that really get you excited. If you're not going to be able to get everything, then you should probably figure out how much you're willing to spend to get what you want. New kitchens and baths are pricey and require some skill to DIY well.

If you found an immaculately-cared for home but it was *covered,* every room, with wallpaper...would you consider it or is that a heck no?
How old is the wallpaper? Some of the older stuff is VERY hard to get off and leaves damaged walls that need to be re-drywalled. That gets expensive. If it's from the late 90s or later, I might consider it but know that you are in for a LOT of messy work.

[marclovesme]

We did get discouraged because inventory moved so quickly at our price range. Our budget didn't go up, but we did end up buying near the top of what we wanted to spend.

We lived in the area we were looking, so we saw houses at all times of day - after work, at lunch, on the weekend, etc. We ended up looking at maybe 15? Since we could do drive-bys, that eliminated a lot of formal house viewings.

If there's a specific area you want to live in, you can try concentrating on that area, using Google maps street view, though definitely not always accurate, Zillow, Trulia, etc. Be open, though (like you said).

Our house was on the "not" list because it was priced too high and the lot was small. We came around when looking at it's positives: two car attached garage, new build, etc. We also got the price down quite a bit. And, for what it's worth, the small yard is now a plus because it's less to maintain!

A good real estate agent will be a great help in terms of pricing. They can tell you how long something's been on the market (whether it's come off and on, too), if it's been under contract but gone out for whatever reason, price history and potential for negotiation, comparable properties, etc. Our agent was AWFUL and I did all the investigative work myself, such as gathering a list of properties to see and determining motive to sell (I would check property records to see if it was a foreclosure, deceased owner, etc.).

In our area we can only afford fixer upers, so wall paper would not be a negative if the house is otherwise a fit.

[simpsongal]

Jan 28, 2013 15:15:48 GMT -5 Susie said:

Jan 28, 2013 15:02:18 GMT -5 kwynn said:

Did you get discouraged? Yes Did you end up changing your budget?  Yes

I have a lot of houses I'm trying to see. How many did you see in person?  21 houses, 26 showings

Is there any way to narrow down the choices online without going to so many?  We got really good at it about halfway through.

I'm afraid to pass up something good so I'm being really open.  There's a balance to strike.  You learn to recognize the things that end up being dealbreakers in listings.  It also really helps if the neighborhoods are in google maps street view.  You can "see" the neighborhood enough to eliminate some.

There's too many houses for me to see though, and some are just really, really overpriced. Any tips to narrow this down before I get there?  I'm not sure what I've got that's generalizable, but definitely try Google Street view. 

The reason I have so much to see is that I have no kids (school district is not a huge concern to me), I work from home (so I can go to any number of places in the city if the price is right), and I'm willing to do some work on a house, so I have trouble eliminating anything. I'm not that picky.   That should help you eliminate the ones that are already updated.  Those likely aren't the best bang for your buck.

Lastly, off-topic, if you found an immaculately-cared for home but it was *covered,* every room, with wallpaper...would you consider it or is that a heck no?  I'd consider it.  I'd offer less, but I'd consider it -  especially if ANY of it was something I could live with for a few months or a year.  You can't do everything immediately.  Fortunately our house only had it in 3 rooms.

Couple thoughts - a lot of online search tools allow you to search for houses built before a certain date. If you're dead set on a historical house, look for those built pre-1960 (or 1950). Just consider that upgrades in historic homes and be a little tricky (walls are not true, plaster & lathe walls, knob & tube wiring, poor insulation, etc.). That said, I LOVE old homes.

Don't go too low re: school district (This may not even be in issue in your area).  Schools affect resale value.

You mentioned overpriced houses.  If they're truly overpriced, they'll sit on the market (unless the buyer is willing to negotiate, which doesn't usually happen if the house is priced way too high to begin with).  Keep watching that house.  Once it's been on the market 30+ days, see if they had a price drop.  Keep monitoring.

[marclovesme]

Jan 28, 2013 15:14:16 GMT -5 kwynn said:

Jan 28, 2013 15:09:40 GMT -5 jerseyjaybird said:

I saw probably 40-50 over two days (I was in town for a relocation/house-hunting trip). On the third day, I revisited my top 5 as well as an additional 2 that my realtor had just found. The same day, I made an offer on one of the "new" ones. My realtor was amazing at reading my body language and listening to me, and after a day or so she added and subtracted houses that she'd already seen to/from the list. She had my style absolutely nailed, and that helped. I had a small number of "musts" on my list (2+ bedrooms, 1.5+ bathrooms, yard, basement) and a million "wants" (hardwood floors, a fenced yard, a fireplace . . . ). Can you eliminate any from your list based only on your wants? Also, how long are you expecting to live there? Is resale value a consideration? If so, being in a good school district would be a big plus.

I can't eliminate based on my wants because I only have 10 things I want or need in a home. They are (in order):

1. Curb Appeal - no flat fronts, no awkwardness, a great looking exterior, no weird windows/placement, no crappy back view
2. Style - old style houses preferred with old details inside
3. Location - prefer XYZ County, has to be on a non-crowded street, no crappy neighbors

4. 1.5 actual bathrooms - one preferred on main living area and one on bedroom level
5. Updating - kitchen and bathroom are not total gut jobs
6. General Condition - no major issues readily apparent such as sloped floors, bad roof, something needs replaced right now

7. Decor - some rooms are livable as-is (not every room needs paint, carpet/floor, light fixtures replaced)
8. Layout - rooms are sized appropriately, no weird/awkward spaces
9. Price - in range relative to amount of work needed/how much we like it

10. Gut feeling

I'll take 7 out of 10.

The crappy neighbors thing usually doesn't surface until after you buy. We live on a great street, but one neighbor is super nosy and three of them are in a feud over a right of way easement that sort of involves us because they like to block the street with vehicles.

ETA: We lived in the house for nearly a year before we noticed how crazy the neighbors are.  The feud has been brewing, but has only started escalating in the last two weeks.

[drloretta]

Not discouraged. It was actually helpful because we realized one town was a no-go, and one style of house wasn't going to work for us.

We looked at anywhere from 2-5 every weekend for 4 months.

You mention looking at overpriced homes. I'd start there. Don't even look at them. We also put together a list of must-haves an nice-to-haves. If the must-haves weren't there we were less likely to see them.

I would take a perfect home except for wallpaper, no problem. I might even hire someone to take it all down. DH has an amazing ability to look past stuff like that and figure we can deal with cosmetics if everything else is perfect.

[Roc A Bee]

We only saw 3. I knew the exact neighborhoods I wanted to live. How many beds/bath/size and the amount of work we were willing to put in. Also my area is small and there wasn't a lot of inventory.

[raangoli]

I've lost count. It's going on a year, which I know isn't exceptionally long, but it's long enough. I would estimate it to be around 30 - 40. I'll hopefully be going to see another two tomorrow night.

It's definitely frustrating and we are going higher than our max budget, just to see if that will find us something.

Massive amounts of wallpaper would not dissuade me from buying a house esp. if I could get a better deal on it.

[kateross]

Jan 28, 2013 15:02:18 GMT -5 kwynn said:

Did you get discouraged? Did you end up changing your budget?
 
I was searching off and on for 4 years since 2006. The interest rate has lowered from 8% to 5%, and the price has gone down considerably, so my budget has changed.

The first time I got turned down for a loan, I was disappointed.  SIL and BIL was to come over for dinner, I told DH I did not want to see anyone.

I have a lot of houses I'm trying to see. How many did you see in person?

Roughly about 3-6 dozens.  It's been so long to count.

Is there any way to narrow down the choices online without going to so many?

I suggest that you pick your must have's, and must not haves and limit them to 5 each.

I'm afraid to pass up something good so I'm being really open.

Answer: I was the same way.  Oh, it's only a condo, but it's in a great neighborhood.  Oh, it's too far, but it's a few miles from the water, etc.  I would not do that again the next time around.

There's too many houses for me to see though, and some are just really, really overpriced. Any tips to narrow this down before I get there?

The reason I have so much to see is that I have no kids (school district is not a huge concern to me), I work from home (so I can go to any number of places in the city if the price is right), and I'm willing to do some work on a house, so I have trouble eliminating anything. I'm not that picky.

Lastly, off-topic, if you found an immaculately-cared for home but it was *covered,* every room, with wallpaper...would you consider it or is that a heck no?

I'd consider the wallpaper house.  That's an easy fix.

[anna7602]

We saw a lot. I can't honestly remember the number, but I do remember that when we finally found the home we bought, we both knew it as soon as we walked in. The same thing happened when we bought our second home together. I don't think we would have had that "this is exactly what we want" moment in either case if we hadn't looked at a ridiculous amount of condos, co-ops and houses (the houses were way out of our $ range or a huge commute to either of our jobs, but were good for comparison).

[Deleted]

We probably looked at close to 100.

Our budget never changed, but I do feel we settled on an ok house in a killer neighborhood. I wish we had taken a break from looking and waited for something else to come on the market.

[Bob Loblaw]

We looked at hundreds online and maybe 20 in person, but our search took over a year.

Before setting up a showing I would take about 10 minutes to research each house online - Google street view, property appraiser website, Googled the address to see what turned up (I often found additional pictures). Then we did a drive-by to see the house and neighborhood in person - easy for us because we were staying in the same area, but obviously more difficult if you're moving farther away.

Between the online research and drive-bys, we eliminated probably 75% of our options and whittled down the search to houses we were really interested in.

I've bought two houses and in both cases, I agree with PP who said that you know right away when you walk into the right house. Patience is so not my strong suit, but I'm glad I didn't settle for the wrong house because I was sick of looking.

[nickyd2006]

We probably saw about 20 over a period of a year. It was depressing. Everything in our price range was too small or too outdated. We lucked out when the place we bought dropped their asking price and we found it on the Mls in our price range. I will say that it only took one showing and we were in love. We put in an offer that same day. It helped that we knew it was a good value for the price. I hate wallpaper, it's a lot more of a pita than you might think. It depends, sometimes the paper comes off easily, or it just takes the wall with it! 

[MrsE]

Omg we saw a ton of houses in person. Our realtor probably hated us lol. We also put in 8 different offers before we got our house.


Sent from my iPhone using ProBoards app

[sillygoosegirl]

We looked at a ton, but we looked at them over a long period of time (almost 2 years) in a very small area (within 1 mile of 4 transit stops). I don't really know how many it was total. Probably between 50 and 100.

We did end up increasing our price range. Largely because we were so frustrated by the choices in our price range, I took a consulting in another state job that allowed us to save around $100K during our search. We ended up spending $42K more than our initial "absolute top of our range for a perfect house" number, and we anticipate doing something like $50K of work to it in the next few years.

Honestly, we just about could have known this was the house from the listing and knowing the neighborhoods, after we raised our price range. This neighborhood is far and away our favorite of the ones we were looking at, and there are only two short little streets of this neighborhood that are outside the HOA (which is something we strongly preferred). In all that time, I think only 3 houses on those streets went on the market. One was too small, but move-in ready and immaculately decorated in a way that was very not our style, and was too expensive given all that. Another would have been okay, but was almost as expensive as our house only without the water view or upgrades that ours has. We were already waiting on the short sale process on our house by then.

We really only went and looked at all those other houses in the hope that seeing a house in person would make the problems on the listing seem manageable. It's just as well that we did though, because we needed to see in person that we truly couldn't afford what we really wanted in the location we wanted, and we wouldn't have learned that there were two streets outside the HOA if we hasn't visited them (I figured the only reason it didn't list the HOA was because the listing was incomplete, and we were just going to have to be in an HOA to live in the area we wanted). If we hadn't been able to increase our price range, seeing all those houses would have felt more relevant. There were a lot more choices on cheaper houses in our target area than expensive ones... We basically knew from the listings that the other houses weren't right, but since we were having such a hard time finding a house that did seem right, we went to see them anyway.

[starlily]

We looked at 60-70 over 2-3 months. I lost count.

After one (out of many) bid rejection that was particularly brutal, we increased our budget by $50k and bought new construction.

The increased budget was a result of the builder's preferred lender bring willing to go the extra mile to make it happen. A somewhat unique situation, but we knew we could afford more in reality than we could on paper. The preferred lender acknowledged that and was willing to stretch the allowable debt/income ratio by a small percentage. They were also willing to do the legal research for a particular question regarding FHA loan procedures and prenups, if we wanted to go that route instead of conventional.

[Deleted]

I think we looked at least than 10, but this was because we wanted to live in a particular town and had a limited budget. Several of the houses we looked at had basically the same floor plan/layout with minor differences. It became apparent quickly that within our price range and location parameters, we basically could choose between a ton of houses that were not all that different from one another. We ended up going with a new build because of the price, location, the fact that everything was brand new and theoretically wouldn't need repairs anytime soon, and it had the biggest master bedroom (sadly, because it's tiny).

Looking back I guess we could have waited and looked around more, but our house fits our needs and our budget and I'm very thankful we didn't raise our budget. Anything more would be unaffordable, anything less would be a condo and we really wanted a yard more than anything else. 

[iheartbanjos]

We saw about 100 in person on 8 different occasions.  We weren't 100% sure where we wanted to live and were relocating to a new state.  This was 2 years ago and there was a lot more inventory.  Now, a house is on the market for only a day around here.

Our realtor previewed a ton for us as well and sent videos of the houses for us when we were back in our other state.

I would absolutely buy a house covered in wall paper.  Wall color/covering is about the easiest and cheapest thing to fix.