Well, I am looking for a home to buy. We can afford to buy a home in an area that seems to meet my criteria. Although it is not my first choice, the area has what I consider an acceptable crime level, good parks, ethnic diversity, varied local businesses, decent sized houses and yards, architectural diversity, and is not too much farther a commute than I have now. I have a list of what we need and what I want.
I am looking for at least three bedrooms and one and a half baths. Laundry facilities and at least one bedroom must be on the main floor. We need at least 7 rooms, one of which should be a large living room or large family room. If the house has four bedrooms and a large living room, a family room is not necessary, but at least two of the bedrooms must be on the same floor. I need at least enough yard to plant some daffodils and a tomato and a pepper plant.
I would like to have everything on one floor. I would like to have a workshop. I would like to have four bedrooms, two full bathrooms, and a family room. I would like to have a dining room separate from the kitchen. I would like to have at least 8 rooms, one of which could be an office. I want enough yard to eventually have room for a green house. I would like enough storage room for all or our stuff. I would like to be close to a park. I would like for the kitchen to face north.
I’d go to one of those Coldwell Banker or other realty sites. You put in your criteria and price range, and they come up with a list of houses. Complete with pictures of each room and sometimes virtual tours. I do this periodically when I’m daydreaming about my retirement digs in New Mexico. It’s tons of fun and is also a reality check on what you can actually expect to get for the money.
As an added bonus, it is a window to the secret world of Incredibly Bad Taste. You have no idea what the words “bad wallpaper” mean until you cruise these sites for a few hours. Sheesh!
I have been googling homes for sale and looking through the various real estate sites. That is how I found this area. KellyMlooked up crime stats, and I looked up demographics. I found a place on buyowner and the person is now using an agent, and that agent showed us that house and is showing us some others in the area as well next weekend.
We are looking up the houses that pique our interest on the county assessors site, and comparing them to houses that have sold in the last six months nearby and looking up recently sold houses in the assessors report. We are finding that homes are generally selling for twice their assessed value, and most listing are for close to that amount. The one we looked at seems to be listed at a way too high of price. I am waiting to see some others before doing anything on that one.
Having gotten this far, I’d say your next move is to get associated with a RE agent and have them do the work for you. Since the seller pays the commission, there is no reason a buyer shouldn’t use an agent’s services. (Note, I’m not recommending signing an exclusive buyer’s agency agreement.)
2 ways to get an agent - if you know folks who live in the target area, ask them who their agent was and whether they’d recommend them. Or on a Sunday see if an agency has a list of open houses. Spend an afternoon going to them to check out the agents more than the houses. The third alternative is to simply walk into an office and take whichever agent is on tap, but if you do that and you don’t seem to jive with them, don’t hesitate to end your relationship.
An agent (as well as some on-line services) will send you regular updates of new listings meeting your criteria.
One thing to keep in mind - try to think of what elements you must have, as opposed to which ones you could do without. For example, when we bought our 1st home we said we wanted a garage. We were really disappointed with the homes they showed us. We were driving back to the realtor’s office intending to dump her, and passed a nice looking house for sale. We said “Why don’t you show us anything like that?” And she said, “It doesn’t have a garage.” That’s the house we ended up buying, and we put up a garage ourselves.
Another thing you have to train yourself to do is to look past paint and carpeting. There are some things you can change relatively easily and inexpensively, and other things (structural, location) not so much.
Enjoy. And yeah - let us Chicago-areans know where you are looking.
Housing prices are kind of funny here. I pay more in Santa Fe to live with two others than I did in Socorro to live alone. It wasn’t unexpected, though.
When we were lookingin Arlington Heights, I saw that about 90% of the “for sale” signs in the neighorhood we wanted to live in were Coldwell Banker. I went to their website and signed up to be automatically “ping”-ed when somethign new popped up in our price range.
Where are you looking?
Zillow.com is interesting to gain a little pricing foresight (I think they’re inflated, really, but no-one seems to agree).
Baird and Warner is ping-ing me nowadays on properties where I want to live…good email notification system.
When we did our house search a year and a half ago, we spent a couple of hours at the RE office with our realtor going over listing after listing on the computer. We had the general area selected, along with a price, and some basic requirements, that cut the list down to around a hundred.
We went over every single listing, each one that was interesting got checked and printed. We then got down to 5 or 6 to set up showings and came back the next week to see them. We weren’t super local so the showings couldn’t just be the next day or that afternoon.
I thought this process was very helpful, we weren’t counting on the agent to figure it all out for us, just to be unhappy with her selections, and feeling like our time was wasted.
We have been looking in Northlake. I put a lot of other communities in the search, but the houses that we like and can afford and we think would have ok commute times are in Northlake.
Which is what I have done with the lists in the OP. We need main floor laundry, I would like a workroom.
We are pretty good at looking past paint and carpeting; any carpeting will have to go anyway. I care more about structural strength and things we can’t easily change.
It sounds like you’re not really recommending Zillow because you think they’re inflated, but I’ll chime in here, too. In my experience Zillow is way off base on their summaries by using incomplete, old, and just flat-out wrong information. I wouldn’t waste my time there at all.
If you’re working with a real estate agent (as someone mentioned, free for the buyer in IL), they should be able to give you accurate sold prices for homes in your area and criteria. And indeed they should do this when you are preparing to make your offer.
Ask them if they have the ability to email you new listings as soon as they come on the market. We (I’m a Realtor) have a function set up in our MLS system that will automatically email you new listings every day. You’ll get these before they go on Realtor.com.
If you’re looking in Cook County, you can get tax information at this site. There’s a similar site for Lake County, let me know if you want the URL. I’m not sure about DuPage.
Lastly, if you see a for sale by owner that looks interesting, don’t be afraid to ask your realtor about it. They may tell you to go ahead and pursue it on your own or they might be able to work out something with the seller in order to get paid for bringing a buyer. Some realtors may not like that advice, but I’d rather know straight up that the people I’m working with are looking at FSBOs and help them make their decision either way. I just may not be able to facilitate the sale because of my company rules. In my view, lost deals are another way to build my business for the future. If I can play a small part of the process, I’ve still made a business connection and hopefully they’ll remember me for their next home or refer someone to me.
I would suggest getting a buyers agent. They will save you alot of time setting up appointments and finding houses that fit your needs. The sellers are paying for both agents already. It is the comission. If you don’t decide to go with a buyers agent you should try to negotiate for a percentage of the comission.
I can’t think of a reason on earth not to have a buyer’s agent. A good agent will find you listings before they appear on Realtor.com, they’ll drive you around, they might even buy you lunch.
Ask your friends to recommend someone they liked rather than just using a realtor you happen to bump into.
We always recommend a lawyer to review the contract and counsel the client in other ways, but I’ve had clients who were real estate lawyers. A real estate agent performs different tasks than the lawyer.
Zillow valued our home 100K higher than it sold for – the month after it sold. Now, 5 months later, they have it valued 125K over what we sold it for and the market is just about dead as a doornail. I don’t know where they get their numbers, but for our house, they’re way off the mark.
