Are you ready to start looking at homes?  At any one moment, buying a home can be: challenging, vulnerable, thrilling, terrifying, life-changing, savvy, collaborative, complicated, fun, overwhelming and immensely rewarding. Yup, it’s all that and then some.

You must be prepared!

Once you reach this step, your finances should be rock solid so you know exactly what you can afford and shop for a home with confidence!  After you’ve been pre-approved for a mortgage, you’re ready for the fun part: finding your perfect home!

Before you dive into the home search, create a list of must-have home features. If you’re buying a home with someone else, make separate lists and compare. Once you have clarity on the features you both want, share them and use those criteria as the foundation of your home search.  You will be able to set a realistic expectation and target your search to areas you can afford.  Get unfiltered, accurate, personalized & private access to 100% of homes available.  

Know you’re making a good investment

When you’re looking for the perfect home, it may be hard to imagine you’ll ever sell it. But just remember, even if you think it’s your forever home, you should shop with resale value in mind. Here are some home-buying tips to help you make a smart investment:

• Don’t compromise on location or layout. These are two things you can’t change about the home you buy. No amount of curb appeal can make up for a truly terrible floorplan. And buying a great house in a not-so-great neighborhood is a bad idea. If you don’t love the location or layout, chances are potential buyers years from now won’t either.
• Look past the surface. Don’t let a lime green bathroom keep you from an otherwise great home. Other buyers may not be able to look past those easy-to-fix details like décor and paint color, which could score you a deal. That lime green bathroom may mean more green in your pocket!
• Buy the least expensive home in the best neighborhood you can afford. That gives your home’s value room to grow in the future. Keep in mind that future buyers who are shopping in a $200,000 neighborhood won't be looking for a $300,000 home.
• Pay attention to home values in that area. Are they rising or declining? Are businesses booming or closing? You can tell a lot about home values in a neighborhood by what’s happening in the community.
• Research the school districts. Even if you don’t have kids, school districts can be an important factor when you sell. Economists estimate that a 5 percent improvement in test scores can raise home prices by 2.5% in suburban areas.
  
  

Many areas have high demand

When it comes to neighborhoods, a lot of factors can help drive up demand.  The average home buyer looks for about 10 weeks before finding the right house, according to the National Association of Realtors.  Don’t sweat it if it takes you a while to find your perfect place! 

• Good schools, great location, and the prospect of rising real estate values over time all combine to make a neighborhood ‘hot’. 
• Low inventory in the current housing market is increasing demand across the board,
• Interest rates have been holding steady, but they could be on the way up, increasing the cost of borrowing.

Buying a home in a hot, in-demand neighborhood is a great investment, but at the same time, competition can be stiff.  More than half of the top 20 markets recorded increases in views per property recently, which means buyers should do their homework and be ready to move quickly.
 

Found a home you are ready to visit?  

In the same way you use Uber or Lyft to quickly find a driver to get a ride, use HomeTraq to quickly find agents to easily schedule a Home Showing, in an average of 3-5 minutes. See A Home Now with HomeTraq.  

Ready to make an offer?  

You can do a lot of research and visiting homes on your own, but when you are ready to write a contract you need the help of an expert in securing your perfect home.