Home search list

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Okay I am a list maker. Getting into the house hunt slowly. I've been favoriting and watching things come and go. I started and excel spreadsheet with address, list price, sale price, size, etc.

But what is most important? What did you look for when buying? What did you compromise on? What do you think was most important and why? What was least important and why?

Any advice and reasoning you had while buying would be appreciated.

[creditcardfree]

The first one off the top of my head is to decide if you are willing to fix up anything on a home. Are you looking for a fixer upper, or one that is move in ready with limited need for updates? With us moving often, move in ready was key. We didn't want to have to replace a roof or carpet if we would move again soon.

Is this your long term home most likely?

[ua_guy]

When I was house hunting, I didn't keep a spreadsheet but rather used one of the big-name real estate agencies to track properties. John L Scott has a great mobile app and you can add homes to your "watch list" and get updates when they change status, price drop, sell, etc. All free. We were watching and tracking for probably a solid year++ before we got to the point where we started looking. It's addicting, and we had a rituals of house hunting (usually starting with breakfast or coffee out somewhere) and we put down a LOT of miles looking at homes.

I also had searches set up based on our criteria (lot size, location, price, # garage spaces, year built, etc). It emails home listings to you as soon as they hit the MLS.

To answer your questions:

What was most important?
We wanted some property (1-3 acres)
Didn't want to see neighbors, if at all possible.
We wanted to be near natural features (rivers, lakes, mountains, trees)
The house had to be in good shape / well taken care of.
The layout had to make sense for us (we were not looking for a traditional tract home with lots of bedrooms).
Lots of garage/shop space.
Within budget (very important).

The house that got us started looking was a log home. I wanted a log home really badly.

What did you look for when buying?
Since we live in a high cost of living area, price was the first filter. After that, we generally looked at the property and location, and then the home itself. We did not want an older home, so we were also crossing anything built before about 1995 off the list unless it was in fantastic shape. This made for a very, very short list of properties because most newer homes built on acreage around here are seriously huge. We did not want a huge house. But we did want slightly rural, but not in a downtrodden area.

We looked at everything that came up because MLS pictures don't tell the whole story. Lots of neat (and very scary) homes out there.

What did you compromise on?
Ultimately we compromised on the age of the home. The home we bought was the oldest of all in our final selection (1997), but it won because it had high quality finishes and neutral colors, all things that were aging well, and it was high quality construction. The only real issue that came back was the roof...the inspectors said it was coming up on needing replaced--still good, but to keep an eye on the composite shingles and caps with the expectation that we would need to replace it in 5 years or so. There are other things that are coming up on their first big maintenance/replacement cycle, like the furnace. But the price that was accepted via short sale was all worth taking on the burden of those things.

The master bath is also ridiculously small for the stature of the home, but it's not the end of the world.

It's not a log home, but the siding is cedar.

Enduring a short sale was definitely a compromise. It requires you to be flexible on price, timing, expectations, and there's no guarantee you'll get the house until the sale is recorded with the county on the day you get the keys. Seriously. It was the most stressful 90 days of my life, ever. Oh, the stories about that transaction...absolutely incredible.

We knew chances of negotiating any fixes or anything else would be extremely slim when dealing with BofA, so that was a compromise. "You get what you see." The sellers were broke and had nothing to offer us either. The sellers were great, though.

What was least important and why?

Some of the things we found least important are things family-types find most important.

Distance from work/schools. Yeah, the commute can be bad, but our employers are in the city and we are adverse to living in the city. The setting makes it worth it.

Things like distance to the grocery store, the school district (no kids). It's all a long haul, but, we wanted to be somewhat isolated.

The exterior trim color was turquoise. We later repainted it dark green to match the style of home (woodsy).

[snafu]

sent a PM

[JoeP]

For us, we liked something with a big yard, a little seclusion, and potential in the house itself (a basement to eventually finish, room to add a porch on the back). If you have a big yard or big driveway, be ready to either do the work yourself, or pay someone and hire out the work. We have both, and agreed to do the work ourselves.

We tend to look ahead and envision if the house will be the house we will stay in for a while. This one we've been in for 15 years, and we expect to stay for another 6 or 7.

[LivingAlmostLarge]

Did people go back multiple times to see the house they bought in the rain/snow/etc? Did you test out the traffic at different times of day? Did you buy in a neighborhood you were familiar with?

How do you predict traffic increasing or getting worse if it's something you suspect? IE lots of new construction and stuff around.

What do you think about the housing market for this year? Do you think it's hot? Will stay hot? Do you guys think deals are still to be had in areas with bidding wars?