By Michael Allen
Continuing from our previous post, when looking for a house, you will need to use EVERY available resource to be sure you find all the possible “suspects” for your list. To help Mark find just the right home for him and his soon to be family, we pulled out all the stops:
We used all the web resources mentioned in post 1 PLUS… when we had a list of “suspects” we went to that subdivision and simply drove the streets. We looked at each of the suspect houses from the street and if they were vacant, we tried to see in the windows and get into the back yards when they were accessible. While driving these areas, we discovered numerous other houses with signs in the yards that had not turned up on our web search.
One note here, when we started the search, we naively thought one or two web sites would give us all the possible suspects to check out in any given area.
Boy, were we wrong!
I cannot tell you why, but even checking Realtor.com which should have EVERY listing, we found many houses that did not show up. Jumping ahead on our story, we submitted a contract offer on a house this week and were just informed the seller accepted Mark’s offer so he will be moving in about 3 weeks! Yes!
I tell you that because the house he is now buying we found when we went to look at another house! This house was two doors away from the one we went to look at originally, has been on the market since October 2007 and in MLS the whole time and yet NEVER turned up on any of the websites we went to! It is listed by one of the larger real estate brokerage companies in this market and when we took the flyer from the yard sign and plugged in the MLS listing number into our local city site it popped right up. Same for Realtor.com! Yet in all our searching it never showed up!
So take a lesson from us… USE EVERY AVAILABLE RESOURCE!
I have even seen yard signs when looking at homes before and when I called my agent to pull up the listing in their MLS computer by using the address, it did not even show up! So realize NO computer database of homes for sale is perfect and double check them all. As you can see from this, even if you are using a buyer’s agent, their searches in the MLS database might not show every house in the computer under the search criteria you are asking for. Like the Army Generals say, “there is no substitute for boots on the ground”!
Another advantage of driving a street and looking for yard signs is that you get a flavor of the neighborhood. In one area we targeted, the homes were all 25-29 years old. Not ideal, but in driving the area we saw almost all yards were well kept and the cars we saw were nearly all relatively late models. Not expensive, but newer. No junkers or derelicts and none parked in the yards. Well kept lawns and no or very few weird looking yard decor issues. So that will give you a good idea if you would like to live there or not and what your neighbors are doing to maintain the property values in the area too.
Another benefit we found was that in this same area we found about three streets that had a bunch of “for lease” or “for rent” signs. On looking closer, we realized the entire street was duplexes! They were well camouflaged to look like larger than average single family homes but they were all actually duplexes for rent. One street had single family homes on one side the these duplexes on the other side. Needless to say, we passed on the two homes for sale on that street. Even if it were not a problem, when you get ready to sell that home, you would not only have a far harder time, but you would not get near the value appreciation from a house located like that. The developer made a huge mistake to mix the two house types in the same area, much less on the same street!
That was something we would never have seen if we had not driven the area in person.
Another major issue was a soil problem. We found several homes in a subdivision at very good prices and at first it looked like a great deal. Here in this area everyone uses a “slab on grade” foundation. Simply a concrete slab on top of the ground with no basement excavated into the earth. So when we were looking at one house that was vacant, walking around it looking in the windows, I noticed holes had been dug in the ground all around the outside. I realized the house had had foundation work done on it. The owner confirmed it but said all the “issues” were fixed & it had a warranty, so it was no problem. Then we looked at two other houses in the area and the foundations had major cracks running along the sides. Then it hit me that when driving down the streets in the subdivision I had to straddle several manholes because the street pavement had sunk down and the manholes were sticking up out of the streets over a full inch! When we put it all together, we realized the whole subdivision was actually sinking! Needless to say, we scrubbed the entire subdivision off our suspect list!
So to summarize: 1.) Search the ‘net, search all other resources, 2.) go drive the areas and look at the suspect list homes plus look for others not on your list. 3.) Get sign flyers whenever they are available because there is usually more information there than you may have so far. and 4.) Cross check all the sources to find all info you can for every suspect you add to your list.
By doing all these things, you will also be able to eliminate many homes quickly once you park in front of the house or see the street or neighbors. This will help you enormously to develop a feel for what exactly you do want in a house so when the right one comes along you will know it instantly! Mark did on the jewel he is buying and I know you can too!
Happy House Hunting…
