You’ve come to the decision that it is time to buy a home. Where do you start? Most people download the most current apps and start browsing and saving their favorite homes. A couple of days go by or maybe even a couple of weeks and they find out you favorites are either already pending or weren’t even really for sale in the first place. Real Estate markets throughout the country, not just in our local market, are seeing very low inventory, coupled with low days on the market. This has buyers scrambling to find the homes that hit the market immediately so they can make an offer right away. After many years of working with buyers I’ve seen buyers unknowingly waste a lot of time and get very frustrated with some of their searches. So I’m going to give some tips on how to create a Great Home!
1. Pick your home search tool wisely. There will be many options for you on the internet to pick from, but they are not all created equal. So what does this mean for you? For example I have a listing that goes on the market, but some of the national websites, might not post my listing for 12 hours, 24, hours and even longer. My listing has four showings in the first few hours and then an offer and under contract before you would even see it. How disappointing if you were only relying on those national sites. You never even had an opportunity.
So where do you go to look for homes? Go to your local real estate agents website and create a search there. My website, www.kammeyerrealtygroup.com, updates every 15 to 20 minutes. Listings will be there within 15 minutes from going on the MLS.
2. Don’t be too selective with the criteria. With the market inventory low, know what your needs are, but you may have to readjust or open up your search more, depending on what you are experiencing in your market.
3. Keep in mind that agents share all of our listings with each other. We pull data from the same source so the likelihood of you finding that one listing that no one knows about is really slim to none. So there is no need to jump from site to site. Whatever site you like you can stick with it.
4. In today’s world a lot of sites are listing homes that are active/contingency or active/backup, or pending, or listings that aren’t available and this is very confusing for buyers. So whatever site you are using make sure you understand the subtitles.
5. Once you have the site you like and are comfortable with, then set up an email alert. At first you will see old inventory, but after that you will be alerted to anything that is new to the market or any price reductions.
My final thoughts…just know the local market conditions. If you’re in a seller’s market, then you need to be diligent about watching your emails and not waiting to see the homes. One or two days and the home you want could be gone. During a buyers market, one or two days could be just fine.
Having a little understand and knowledge goes a long way and knowing there is such a lag time with some of the national home search sites, will help with finding your next home.
If you want to learn more about the home buying process, contact me at [email protected] or call me at 317-698-7109!
