Deciding what’s important

Deciding what is important is the primary differentiator between requiring a year to find a house to finding a house in a few weeks.  The reason for this is people often do not know what they truly want.  Deciding what is important is a demanding task, but with the right real estate agent this can be simplified dramatically.

For many buyers, there exists a significant difference between what they think they want and what they actually want. 

Searching for a house involves two conflicting realities.

1.      The more your requirements for the house remove potential matches from the list, the more likely you will miss the house you truly want.

2.      Fewer requirements for the house will increase the number of potential matches, making it not possible to viewing them all and increasing the chance that you will miss the house you truly want.

To illustrate this, a number of years ago I was looking for my next house.  I created an exact list of requirements that included having four bedrooms.  One day I decided to change my search criteria to list all houses and noticed a beautiful house with a gorgeous view.  The house had almost everything I was looking for – the view, the land, and was nicely finished.  I never noticed the house before because it only had three bedrooms.  It did, however, have a bonus room that for my purposes would have sufficed.  Unfortunately, it was already subject to inspection.

The goal of any good real estate should be to ascertain as quickly as possible what type of house you are truly looking for.  Once this is determined, the real estate agent can show you only the potentially interesting homes without worrying about missing the perfect home.

The following exercises will better enable you to quickly determine what you are truly looking for.

Begin by making a list of what you think you want in a house.  It is likely that this will not be the list you wind up with, but will provide you with a starting point.  Consider the following questions.

ü  What neighborhood(s) interest(s) me

ü  Is an older home OK?  How old is acceptable?

ü  Am I willing to buy a fixer upper and renovate it?

ü  What school district(s) do I want to stay in?

ü  How large should the house be?

ü  How many bedrooms should it have?

ü  How large of a kitchen should it have?

ü  How many bathrooms should it have?

ü  How should the master suite look? Should it have a large master bath? Fireplace? Vaulted ceilings?

ü  Do I want a swimming pool in the house or are houses with swimming pools unacceptable because you have small children?

ü  Do I want a view?

ü  How much land should it have?

ü  What house style should it be?  Two story? Rambler? Rambler with a basement? Split level?

ü  How long should my commute to work be?

ü  Do I want a kitchen separated from the dining room or joining?

ü  Do I want a town house, condominium, or a single family home?

ü  What is my maximum price?  What is the preferred price?

ü  Do I want to resell this home in a few years?

Some of these requirements will be more important than others.  Make sure to let your real estate agent know which are the ‘deal killers’ or things that you cannot live without.  Any house that does not meet one of these requirements will not be shown.

Once you have answered the above questions and have added any other details about the house that you feel are important, the next step will be to see several houses that meet these requirements with your agent.  These houses should meet the requirements that you initially specified, though it is likely some of the less important requirements will be missing.

It is possible that you will fall in love with one of these houses and buy it.  If that is the case, then the remaining exercises will of course not apply to you.

If none of the houses was appealing, then there are only two possible explanations.

1.      The houses did not meet a necessary requirement.  Given that the agent should have showed you only houses that met your ‘deal breaking’ requirements, the answer must be that you have one or more requirements that are more important than you thought.

2.      At least one of the houses met your requirements, but was still not satisfactory.  This is a very likely case for those just beginning and demonstrates that your requirements are not what you thought they would be.

Before you look at more houses, your real estate agent should discuss with you your requirements and the houses you have just seen.  You should now consider the following questions.

ü  What is the #1 reason I am buying a house?

ü  When I entertain friends at my house, what would I be most proud of?

ü  In what ways could the house brighten up each day?

ü  What do I want the house to ‘say’ about me?

ü  In what parts of the house will various family members spend the most time?

ü  How will the house affect my daily life?

From these questions the next step will be to revise your list of requirements and desires given your answers to the questions above and the results of house searching. 

A good agent will then show you not only houses that meet your requirements but also houses that may fail in individual requirements, but based on your answers above and conversations she has the suspicion that you’ll love it.  With each house viewed, requirements and desires will be updated and you’ll find yourself viewing fewer houses but each house will become more and more interesting until you reach a point where you say “this is it!”