Searching for your Home
You’ve worked through your dream, you’ve hired an agent, gone through the consultation process, and you’ve got the money piece figured out. Now for the fun part – looking at houses.
It IS fun, right? Well, yes. There is something really exciting about looking at the first few homes and about finding “THE” home. It can be a bit tiring too though, so it’s good to be efficient and narrow things down right from the start. It’s even better to understand what might be ahead of you. So, what does the process look like?
Step 1: Set up the MLS Search
One of the best tools for collaborating with your agent is searching the MLS system from the Realtor side.
You get your own “search portal” essentially – your own private search website – and it gives you access to listings as soon as they hit the market, instead of waiting the 24-48 hours that Realtor.ca takes to sync. And more importantly, it allows the agent to filter out all of the properties that don’t meet your needs.
Step 2: Sort Through and Narrow Down
Once the search is set up, you need to go through the options and narrow it down. You’ll need to weed out options that just don’t appeal to you, put a “?” on the ones that you might consider but just aren’t quite there (it’s a backup option list of sorts), and find the homes that you are excited about.
Step 3: The Education Tour
This step is a bit optional, depending on how clear you are on what you want, and it’s possible you will find the right home on the first trip out, so be prepared. However, especially for first-time buyers and buyers making a significant change in style of house, we find that this is very valuable. The “Education Tour” is essentially going to view a variety of properties that appeal to you to get a sense of what you like in real life, not just online.
Step 4: The Search Revision & Second Sort
After the “Education Tour” you’ll have learned some things about what you like and don’t like, so there may be some changes to make to your search parameters. You may be able to narrow down the options or create more of them.
After those changes are made, you’ll need to go back in and sort through any new options. It’s also a good idea to go back through that possibilities list and see if there is anything that you now know is a “no-go” or that you may consider more seriously. See more favorites, you could find something right away instead of waiting for new inventory.
Step 5: Look at Houses
There are a couple things that might happen when you start seriously looking at houses. The first is that you may find the right house in the existing pool of available homes.
The second is that you have to wait for new options to come onto the market. Regardless, this is when the searching kicks into high gear.
Step 6: Pick a Home
As you see more homes, the decision process will get easier. To the point where many buyers walk into a house and “just know”.
Once you find a home that meets your needs, you get to write an offer! We’ll walk you through that in “The Offer” segment of your Guide to Everything.