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San Antonio Real Estate

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How Many Houses Should I Look at Before Making an Offer?

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How Many Houses Should I Look at Before Making an Offer?

Home buyers often have a lot of questions and one of the ones we hear a lot as we drive around with them is, “How many houses should I look at before making an offer?” We’ve seen buyers begin to get nervous – thinking that they’re looking at too many, being too picky, or they simply get afraid that they’re not doing it “right.” So what is too many? What is too few? How many houses make the magic number that somehow allows you to find the one? First, take a deep breath. Now exhale. Take a moment to focus on the goal – we’re going to find you a house and you’re going to buy it. Everything is going to be alright. Now, let’s talk about buying a house, shall we?

How Many Houses Does the Average Person Look At?

According to research by the National Association of REALTORS®, the average homebuyer views 10 homes before making an offer and the search process takes 10 weeks. We can hear some of you saying, “Only 10 homes? That’s crazy! How can you find the best home out of only 10 houses?” Don’t worry – finding a home isn’t about fitting into some secret formula, it’s about finding the right home that fits your needs. We’ve shown one home and wrote up a contract and we’ve shown countless homes and are still looking for the perfect home. No two buyers are the same. It’s all about building a plan that works for you and figuring out your needs and what matters to you most in a home. Sometimes you’ll find that you even surprise yourself and completely change direction midway through the process because what you thought you wanted in a home, isn’t actually what you figure out you need.

Interestingly, the number of homes and weeks searched cuts in half to 5 homes and 5 weeks for buyers who did not use the internet in their search.

The trick to finding a home is not about a numbers game and fitting into anyone’s formula. You need an agent that will work with you to define the criteria you’re looking for, to understand your wants versus your needs, that understands the motivations that drive your decision to buy, and know the market inside and out. There are a lot of homes out there and narrowing down your choices to homes that truly matter to you will help you from spending countless hours looking at homes that just don’t interest you. If you find yourself feeling like you’re just spinning your wheels, stop and sit down with your agent and talk some more about what it is that truly matters to you. Sometimes it’s all about taking a step back and looking at it all again before heading back out to view more homes.

image courtesy of RowdyKittens

Searching For a Home With Kids in Tow

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Screaming Kid

As any parent can tell you, sometimes just taking kids on a five minute run to the store can quickly become chaotic, nevermind a whole day of house hunting. Add to it the stresses of being in a stranger’s home, worrying about a large financial investment, and it’s nearly a perfect recipe for disaster. We all love our children, but it isn’t always easy to balance the tasks in front of you and their needs at the same time. But fear not, searching for a home with kids doesn’t have to be impossible and it certainly doesn’t need to drive you to the brink or make you give up your home search. There are some quick pointers and tips to try and help you keep the young ones in line and everyone just a little bit saner throughout the process.

Tip 1: Timing. If at all possible, try to schedule your appointments at times that your kids are at their best. If mornings are always rough, consider pushing back those first showings. Schedule frequent breaks to regroup and get the sillies out or even to accommodate a nap or two. But also remember that everything will take a bit longer with children – from getting in and out of the car to lunch breaks to viewing the homes. Plan for extra time and keep the schedule flexible to accommodate for those extra minutes.

Tip 2: Food. Start the day with a good breakfast and keep that trend going. Keep snacks in the car or on hand to occupy little hands and fill little bellies. Never underestimate the ferocity of hunger on a kid’s attitude (or a parent’s for that matter). Try, if at all possible, to bring healthy, clean snacks. Just imagine what Cheeto fingers do to a stranger’s white curtains or what Hi-C Fruit Punch looks like on their new carpet. If at all possible, do try to keep these snacks in the car or outside. Accidental spills in a stranger’s house or potential allergy flare ups could cause much bigger headaches later on.

Tip 3: More Food. Take time to break for lunch. Not only is it a good time to clean up and fill up, but it is also a good time to stop and reflect on the homes, narrow the search, and just regroup for the day.

Tip 4: Distractions. In the age of technology, electronics can be a parent’s lifesaver. Educational games on a phone or tablet may be great distractions that keep kids mellow instead of running through homes jumping on all of the furniture. Not a fan of technology? You can still keep children’s attention focused with games or songs.

Tip 5: Divide and conquer. If possible, bring a second adult on the house hunt. One parent could keep the kids wrangled in the backyard while the other peruses the property and then you can swap. Devise a buddy system (either with a parent or older sibling) in which children aren’t left unattended.

Tip 6: Beware of Pets. Every homeowner is different and every pet situation can be complex. Some owners elect to remove their pets from homes entirely for every showing. Others kennel animals or just advise potential buyers to stay out of pet areas for the initial showing. But others have animals freely roaming their homes for every showing. Pets can pose problems for kids on several fronts. First, allergies. Both kids and adults can have allergies to pets, pet dander, or other associated aspects of pets. The pets might have allergies too (think of them eating snacks dropped or left behind). Second, injury. A pet left in a home may normally be calm, but they may also not be used to being around kids or kids may not be used to handling pets. Pets get scared, nervous, and don’t always react how they would under normal conditions. You are strangers in their home and they may bite, nip, scratch, or claw. Don’t let your children find out the hard way.

Tip 7: Manners. It’s worth a lecture or two to children before and during the day about respecting other people’s property. Remember that home sellers have allowed you to come through their private spaces with little to no information about you at all, so they have to rely on an unspoken trust that you and everyone with you will treat their property respectfully. They may have precious family heirlooms on display that are irreplaceable or easily broken. A cool toy in their kid’s room might be easily picked up by your child, who may not think much of it at the time, but no one wants people going through their personal belongings. Respect that privacy and space and help your children understand they should as well.

Tip 8: Involvement. This may be the opposite of Tip 4, but when it comes to kids, there is no right answer. Depending on the child(ren)’s ages or temperaments, having them engaged in the process may actually be a huge help. Learning to read the MLS sheets or property flyers, taking a video of the home for review later, jotting down notes and features, or even planning layouts are all good tasks for kids to keep them involved. Plus, you could even throw in a little math homework by having them calculate prices, interest, square footage, and more.

Tip 8: One Word, Babysitter. For your own peace of mind and sanity, it may be worth it to invest a bit of money in a babysitter. This may allow you to be more focused on the task at hand, move through properties quicker, and make a decision on the right home for you in a more efficient manner. You can probably speak more openly with your agent about finances or technical questions as well. As an added bonus, there may even be a bit of time left at the end of the day to stop off for a cold beer or glass of wine.

image courtesy of MichaelLaMartin

Targeting Your Online Home Search

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Targeting Your Home Search

Zeroing in on the perfect home.

Most of you reading this blog who are actively thinking of buying a home, will probably search online through hundreds of homes before ever contacting an agent. The internet has completely revised the way we search for homes – even I went online before contacting an agent when I moved to San Antonio. Scrolling through the listings helps create a sense of excitement for homebuyers; they see homes they instantly love, they learn about neighborhoods they want to live in, and start to get a sense for just what it is they want most in a new home.

All the information available can be daunting though. Online home search sites are chock full of data, both in terms of actual listings and information (take this blog for instance). Making sense of all the data is not always easy and there’s a few things you can do to make it flow smoothly.

Five tips to target your online home search.

Begin with a wide set of criteria. – At this point, you should have already been pre-approved (or at least spoken to a lender about what you can afford). Start your online home search based on as few factors as possible. I suggest you try and target the price range you’re looking for and perhaps a basic requirement for bedrooms, but keeping it wide open will show you a great picture of what’s out there. As you move along, you can start narrowing it down – one-story vs. two, having that extra half bath, communities you prefer, amenities you prefer, etc. You’ll be able to eliminate more and more homes as you get more detailed.

Use different sites. – Although we’d love to sit here and say “use only our site for your online home search,” (and we’d love it if you did), we know you’ll be out there searching a ton of sites. Sometimes, you may find that seeing a house on one site, you might love it, but seeing it on another site, you might not like it as much. Just remember that the data from one site to the next might not be the same. The best data will come direct from the MLS, so although you may see something on a site, check with your agent to be sure it is accurate and the home is still available.

Take notes. Lots of notes. – When searching online for a home, you’ll begin to see many similarities in properties. As you see more and more homes, they have a tendency to blend together. This is true of going to see the homes in person as well. Many builders use similar floor plans, materials, and design features – so it’s easy to get one house confused with the next. The better your notes, the easier it will be for you to say, “What about that one house…?”

Rank homes by preference. – Build a ranking system for yourself. Use stars, letters, numbers – any system you are comfortable with. Once you’ve ranked some homes, as you add more, go back and re-rank all the homes. You’ll find you can eliminate some that you once thought were perfect. As your online home search builds it’s easy to wind up with 100 must-see homes. Eliminating them as you go (we recommend keeping notes on the eliminated ones though – you never know when you might change your mind) helps alleviate some of the hopelessness of feeling like you just don’t know which ones to go see in person.

Use your REALTOR®. – We see it a lot: buyers who say “my agent is too busy, so we’re calling to get some info ourselves.” Many times, buyers will call the listing agent with questions (or ask questions in an online forum). Your REALTOR® gets paid to do this, why put so much of the burden on yourself? By all means, continue your online home search, but let your agent in on the process. Let them make the follow up calls to find out if the home has had foundation repairs. Let them call the listing agent to ask if the sellers plan on leaving the swingset in the backyard. Your agent should be sending listings to you, but if you see something you like that may not have come up in their search (often because it is out of the set criteria that your agent and you have discussed), give them the address or MLS# and see what they can find out for you. Same thing goes for a house you drove by the night before.

Time to start seeing homes in person.

There comes a point when searching for a home online stops being viable and it’s time to suit up and hit the road to visit these homes in person. Photos, virtual tours, and descriptions only tell part of the story. Seeing a home in person can completely change your mind about it (which is why we recommend hanging onto the eliminated properties). This is truly where the fun begins…are you ready? Let’s go find you your new home.

image courtesy of twoody291

Home Search Data – How Accurate is the Listing?

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Bullseye

A homeowner recently wrote to me asking that we remove their listing from our site as the listing had been cancelled. As always, I looked into the issue, and found that the property had indeed been removed from the market and that it had been listed by an agent with another company. Checking our home search, I looked for the property and confirmed that it wasn’t on our site any longer. Being curious, I decided to google the property some more and find any other instances of it being listed on the internet. What I found surprised me, but considering what I know about the internet and real estate, I guess it shouldn’t have.

On this particular listing, I was able to find reference to it on several sites. The listing had been canceled over twelve days earlier, but there it was. I wasn’t too shocked that I found it, listings have a tendency to linger around the internet longer than they should and if the agent doesn’t know the tools they use and how to use them, some listings just seem to last forever and ever. I checked the big sites first, namely Trulia and Zillow. Trulia had the listing, but did correctly note that the listing was no longer active. Zillow listed it, but was ambiguous as to whether it was active or not. I did note that the former listing agent was in the lead spot on the agent ads, which indicated to me that Zillow would still be feeding the leads to that agent. Like I said, this isn’t all that uncommon, it was upon digging further that I found the real surprise.

One of the sites that returned as a search result happened to be the former listing agent’s office website. When I navigated my way to their site, I was presented with a rather unappealing listing page generated by their IDX provider. Much like our home search, the home search was powered by an third party IDX company – there are quite a few out there. The surprise was that the IDX feed showed the property as active. Twelve days after the property was taken off the market, the listing was still for sale according to the site.

Our IDX provider, Diverse Solutions, has been with us since we relaunched this site about a year ago (and before that Matt had used them for personal sites for about three years) and we love their product. It gives our visitors a gorgeous map based home search and is easy to use. What makes it even better? The IDX feed (a stream of data provided by the San Antonio MLS direct to them) is updated every fifteen minutes. Here was another site that hadn’t been updated in twelve days! Every fifteen minutes our site gets a fresh set of data reflecting new entries into the market, price changes, new info and photos, as well as deleting sold and cancelled listings. It doesn’t get much more up to date than that (unless you use the MLS directly, which only members of SABOR can do).

We’re proud of bringing you this data and promise to continue to stay current with search technology to better your experience on our site. We love having you return day after day looking for that perfect home and thank you for the business generated from this site. Next time you’re thinking about listing your home for sale, don’t be afraid to ask your agent about their technology – accuracy does matter.

image courtesy of seantoyer

Have you seen our home search?

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Search for homes in San Antonio

When searching for a home in San Antonio, there’s no better place than right here at Kimberly Howell Properties. With our map-based home search, we make it easy to find the home that fits your needs (of course, we can always help you with your search, just contact one of our agents).

Our map-based, full-featured home search is designed to help you find homes, save favorites, and compare listings as you begin your home search. Using the easy sliders you can adjust your parameters – beds, baths, price, square footage as well as defining specific search criteria; such as zip codes, areas, schools, parking, lot size, features, price reductions and much more.

With all this info at your fingertips you can begin saving properties to your profile so that you can come back to them later or notify your agent of a home you want to see. All from the comfort of your home!

Registration is easy and can be done by filling out a simple form or connecting via Facebook, Google, or Yahoo. Don’t worry, we don’t sell your information as we take your privacy seriously. Registration allows you to save properties and pick up again where you left off, as well as allowing you to receive email alerts of new properties as they come on the market or price changes are made.

Ready to get started? Register today and start searching for homes!

Already registered? Login and continue your home search!

You can even login and register with your Facebook, Google, or Yahoo account.