How many houses did you see before you bought?

[phoenixgirl]

Our story went like this.

a Saturday in December 2006: trying to fit a Christmas tree (DH wanted to store 300 CDs behind a door that closed flush with the wall????) in our tiny condo leads me to announce that while we can''t buy the big row house we''ve always dreamed of just now, we can buy a smaller row house a couple of blocks away (which is still triple the size of our condo). This is our first serious conversation about buying a house.

Sunday: we go to an open house in the desired neighborhood, kind of half serious. The house has a lot going for it but only has one bathroom. The listing agent is our friend and we tell him we''re considering buying. I see a listing that is a better location and has 3 bathrooms and we call our friend to set up a time to see it.

Tuesday: we go see our house with our realtor friend, make an offer, and a few counters later it''s ours (it''s much easier to counter when you''re not that emotionally invested in the process yet)! Home sweet home.

For years afterward, well still to this day, really, I kept my eye on the listings on the area to see if buying a house on a whim meant we missed out on something better, but I have never seen what we have -- location, # of bathrooms, # of closets (important in these old houses), off street parking, size of lot, the important upgrades (opened up floor plan, central air upstairs, etc.), for anything near our price. I''ve seen houses with snazzier upgrades, but those are things we can change ourselves and usually mean a higher sticker price.

I really shocked my friends at work when I came back from winter break and announced we''d bought a house since I had never mentioned/thought about it before break.

So we only saw two houses in any kind of serious way. We had been to many open houses just as something to do on a Sunday afternoon but never as potential buyers.

P.S. This might change once baby arrives and then has a little brother or sister one day, but right now we have scrapped our plan for the bigger house. We figure that however big your house is, you just get more stuff to fill it. So our plan is: don''t accumulate too much stuff, stay in starter house, and instead of buying that bigger house, use the money to buy a condo in Paris. We''re serious. I''ve even been learning French this summer!

 

[Miranda]

I don''t remember how many houses. For the first house I looked 6 mos. To find the second house we looked 3 mos. It is never an easy task.

 

[julabean]

We were in the 100+ house category. Our story was a little different, though, because we first had to sell our condo before we bought our house. The 100+ includes houses we toured before we even had an offer on our condo, but there were several we really liked, so I''ll go ahead and include them. We almost put a contingent offer on a house, but in the end I''m glad we waited because the house we ended up buying was so much better for us. We weren''t in a huge hurry, since our condo wasn''t selling at that point, and even if it did sell, the market was still going down, so we were okay with renting for awhile if we didn''t find anything we liked.

We looked at probably 20-30 houses right when we first put our condo on the market. This was mostly driving around to new construction developments with my parents (they loved house hunting with us!), some of which were drastically out of our budget. We also used to go online to the real estate websites Sunday morning, find the open houses for that day, and make a map of the houses we wanted to see. The house we almost put an offer on was found this way.

Once we started getting some serious buyers interested in our condo, our realtor took us out. We went out with him twice before we were under contract on our condo, mostly I think for him to get a sense of what we liked. He had our requirements, but I think he needed to get a feel for how we looked at houses. My husband is reallly good at looking at the potential and looking for obvious flaws that would be caught in an inspection. I would be thinking about how it would be for children, as well as the general feeling. DH liked a lot of houses that I just couldn''t see myself living in, so even though they were perfectly acceptable houses, they wouldn''t get on our list.

Once we were under contract, we seriously started house hunting. We went out with our realtor probably 4 other times. We found our house on the 3rd time we went out with him (6+ hours on a Saturday or a Wednesday). The last time we went out with him was seeing 4-5 houses we''d seen before but were on our final list. Our house was the last house we went to and we knew pretty quickly upon going to see it for the second or third time that it was the one.

We looked at so many more houses than anyone else we knew, but we were looking for a house that was big enough for us to be in for the next 20 years. We also had the time to do so, since we were waiting for another property to sell. I''m glad we waited and were picky buyers - if we hadn''t been, we would have made an offer on a house that sold for $60k less than what we would have offered, was smaller, and in a location we didn''t truly love. (And ultimately, we paid $60k less than that for our house!)

 

[partgypsy]

Only 1.
10+ years ago we were renting, and as we were not getting along with the neighbors had been discussing moving, renting somewhere else. I was bummed out about leaving our place and our neighborhood. I wishfully wanted to buy a house, but knew we didn''t have the means for it, especially if we wanted to stay in our neighborhood. Just so happened the university I worked with put up a number of houses for sale that were previously rentals, with a short (1 month bid process). Only 1 was in our price range, just around the corner of us. We won the bid and the rest is history. It still wasn''t an easy decision; it was a rental and we knew it needed alot of renovation. But it was buy and fix up, or continue to rent and I feel we made a very good decision.

 

[partgypsy]

On the other hand, my parents-in-law finally moved down to live near us! They were probably closer to the 100+ category.
For the past 2-3 years, every time my MIL came down to visit, she would look at houses. However they didn''t even put up their house for sale until Dec of last year. And then more multiple visits to look at houses. After the 3rd or 4th afternoon like that I stopped going because I was getting burned out and it honestly seemed they wouldn;t actually ever buy a house. But after their house sold, they bought a house literally within a couple weeks. I can''t tell you whether the house they bought is any better than the previous ones they saw, but maybe it was more about the timing. My favorite house they saw at the beginning of their search; a restored victorian, absolutely gorgeous restored interiors with modern kitchen and bathrooms (the master bathroom had a wood paneled steam room!). Most probably it had gotten sold by the time they were ready to buy.

 

[fisherofmengirly]

We started looking in October and found our house at the very end of February. I thought we''d never find "the" house. But we did. Of course, there are elements of it that we didn''t like right away, but we changed them when we moved in (color of the kitchen, hardware in the kitchen, light fixtures, bedroom colors, etc.).

In the end, we looked at over 70 houses and our realtor was REALLY happy when we finally found our home.

Making a list of must-haves, would like to haves, and CANNOT haves really helped us. Paul made one, I made one, and we compared and got a list of what would be deal breakers for us, and after we did that, we gave it to the realtor and then really only saw about 15 or so houses before we found ours.

First time homeowners often don''t know what they want until they see several that they don''t want, and then they can make a list that isn''t vague and truly states what they need/want.

Good luck in the search! It''s a fun time, for sure!

 

[October2008bride]

We probably looked at 40+ in person and a zillion more online!! We started looking in January and bought this July. We put offers on 3 houses, and was successful onthe last one and I''m so happy we didn''t get the other two now!

I know everyone always says that - when it is "right" it will work out, but it is totally true!! I feel a little like Goldilocks - the first was too small, the second too big, and the third was just right

We did the same as Fisher and each made a list of our wants etc. and compared them. It really helped although after losing 2 houses and hardly any coming on the market, we started to sway on a few of them. Luckily, we knocked some sense into each other and got back on track.

Over time, we also narrowed down the area we wanted to live in - so I guess we became even pickier, but after looking for that long, we figured we should hold out for the perfect place/location/price. And it worked. When our house came up, we already knew we loved that neighbourhood/street and we were able to confidently JUMP on it

The rest is (soon to be in one week) history!

Good luck!

 

[CJ2008]

Hey NEL

We looked at close or over 100 homes and we STILL haven''t bought.

It actually worked out for us because at the time we were looking the market was at the very top...I am relieved to see others in the 70s, 80s, and 100s - it means we''re not THAT crazy. haha But seriously, looking back, there aren''t any houses that I can say "we should''ve grabbed that one." Especially at THOSE prices at that time.

However - I do think there comes a point where you need to realize that you will not find perfection. If you wait for that, you''ll never buy. I think it''s taking DH a little longer to realize than it took me so I think that''s the process we needed to go through to lower our standards a little.

Neatfreak - is the 3 L''s something you came up with, or is it something that''s well know out there? I think it''s genius. I will DEFNITELY be using that when we start looking again - I can''t wait to tell my DH about it, I think it''s going to help us a lot.

 

[shigidigi]

NEL, we looked at over 30 before we were comfortable enough pulling the trigger. Not to mention it is so hard to get everything on a wish list that all parties involved may want (unless you have gobs of money

and can afford everything!) so you need time to weigh compromises.

I am so excited you guys are looking! Now seems like such a great time to buy- we just did and it was sooo worth it!

 

[joflier]

We just spent a weekend looking at about 10 homes. Of those, there was nothing we liked, except 1, and when we walked in the door, we just knew it was the one. Fell in love, and nothing else compared. And I had no interest in looking any further. I liked that one, and wanted it. So that was it. And almost 3 years later, I''m more in love with it than ever. Now, being by myself, its totally impractical, but I don''t care. Its gonna take a lot for anyone to get me outta that place! Good luck in your hunt! Have patience though. If your not thrilled with anything, don''t give up. Keep looking until you find something that really gets you. It''ll be worth it! Be nitpicky. Its a big investment, and its the place that your going to live basically 24/7, so you WANT to be thrilled with it!