“Sometimes you have to shop around to get a firm handle on what you like — and dislike — and what your market has to offer,” Sager noted. “Don’t think of it as wasted time if it takes a while for the right house to appear; consider it time well spent honing your house-hunting skills.” Some home shoppers struggle for years to find the right home, no matter how much online research they do or how many onsite visits. Lynne Freda and her husband ended up buying a home that wasn’t even for sale. One day, they were driving with their agent. Suddenly Freda’s husband saw a house and exclaimed that it was the one; however, the home wasn’t listed or on the market. “The real estate agent said she’d sold the house to the owners and offered to check in to see if they were ready to move on,” writes Sager. They discovered that the owners had been thinking about moving because the husband got a new job offer. Freda and her husband looked inside and were sold, gave an offer, and bought the home. Don’t settle for something that’s just close to what you need. “If you spot your dream house, but it isn’t for sale, it never hurts to ask,” Sager reports. The point here is that every buyer’s home-search process is different. What happens or works for one buyer won’t necessarily be the case for another. Don’t feel pressure because of something that worked out for someone you know. Purchasing or renting a home is likely going to be one of the largest financial investments you will make in your lifetime. Don’t settle, don’t make a hasty decision based on pressure or weariness, and definitely don’t choose a home that you’re not 100% sure about or comfortable with, because you’ll probably be paying your mortgage or paying monthly rent for that thing for years. And you definitely don’t want to end up in another pre-foreclosure situation, so you’ll need to find something affordable and realistic.
So, where do you start?
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