Mark Wozniak: This segment is about one of the most exciting parts of the whole home buying process - which is actually visiting the properties. And in another segment we talked about how before visiting properties it’s very important to have your buyer criteria set and to have selected the properties you want to visit and to get that list over to your buyer agent. So now let’s talk about the actual process of visiting properties.
Leigh Anne Monk: Great! Thank you, Mark. One of the first things an agent will do is take that list and determine exactly which homes can be looked without making appointments and which one need a courtesy call, a call ahead. Primarily those homes that are vacant you can go and see almost at any time and those that have homeowners may have restricted times and showings and so you need to coordinate that and that is one of the responsibilities of your agent.
So your agent with take the list and determine which house to go to first, second and third. They will often provide you a map and a list and a short list of all those listings. You can kind of follow along in your car as you go from property to property. Now just as a reminder this is one of the primary reasons you need to have an agent because we have the lock box key to get you into the house. You can’t see the house other than that so we just really encourage you to get that buyer's agent.
So as you go through the homes you’ll be making notes of which features it has based on your criteria. You may have to compromise here and there but by and large you’ll be able to find a house that does meet your criteria.
The second way that you can visit homes is primarily over the weekends in what we call an open house. An open house is when the listing agent - the agent that is representing the seller - holds the house open for a period of two or three hours typically on a Sunday afternoon, at least in this area. And the house is open and free to anyone to stop by and look at the property. It’s a really good way to see several properties on a Sunday afternoon and the other good thing is you don’t necessarily have to go with your agent.
But what we recommend is if you like go without your agent to an open house all you have to do is bring that agent's card with you and hand that card to the agent that’s there at the house. That way if there are any further questions or interest in the house than the negotiation occurs between the two agents and you don’t have to be involved in that part. It’s just a really nice way to kind of get into the house and see several properties at once.
Mark Wozniak: That’s right and sometimes people ask me whether they’re visiting with their agent or at an open house and asked, "Hey, is it okay if I bring someone else along? What about my kids - can I bring them?" and I always encourage people to bring whoever you are comfortable bringing. Whoever is going to be important to this decision making process for you and certainly sometimes kids give the most terrific feedback on homes that you’ll hear. So we are used to going out with children so don’t be concerned about bringing them along. Sometimes that means we can’t all fit in one car so therefore we have to split among cards, but then again bring the family.
Leigh Anne Monk: That’s true and often in terms of the timing of looking at homes we often look at homes on the weekends, during the day and we’ll often go out after work. Now depending on what time of year you’re looking, it may be hard to see the home as well, depending upon the clock, the time change and things like that, but I’ll often have a person get in a couple of homes pretty easily from the 5:30pm to 7pm timeframe and it just helps you begin to ascertain and just narrow down your homes and think, "This ones on the list. This one’s not on the list," to kind of narrow down that selection.
Now one thing we like to give all our buyers permission to do is that if you walk into a home and as soon as you walk in you just get a feel, you smell a smell, honestly, there may be noises. The house may be closer to an intersection and you couldn’t quite tell from the pictures. If you don’t feel comfortable in the home in the first ten seconds just tell your agent, we’ll turn around and walk out and we’ll go to the next house. Why is that important? We don’t want to waste your time. Your time is very valuable and so we want to do our best to work through as many houses that we can in that visit so don’t feel you have to go upstairs if you didn’t like the downstairs. Let’s move on to the houses that you like.
Now another way that we help do that we will often encourage our clients to do what we call a drive by of the neighborhood. Once they’ve narrowed down the list of the five to seven houses they want to see on a given day we ask them to go by the neighborhood ahead of time because sometimes you just get a feel for the neighborhood. You’ll see how the landscaping is taken care of by the other neighbors, how they upkeep their homes. You’ll just get a feel for what things look like and may give you a really good indication whether you can see yourself and your family living there.
Mark Wozniak: Right, and the flip side of maybe seeing a home and immediately eliminating because there is something you didn’t like about it is that we have had many, many situations where our buyers the very first day out, first time out, one of the first homes they walked into, that’s the home may wanted to buy. And it’s really not so uncommon just because we are visiting the home based on the criteria that you selected as most important.
So you may see a home that very first day that you want to write an offer on by all means go ahead and write the offer on that home and don’t feel that you have to see another twenty on the list if you’ve seen the home that is right for you. Especially if it is a new listing that might have a lot of other folks visiting it, so just be aware that there is both sides to that coin and not be concerned if you find something too quickly that you like.
Leigh Anne Monk: Right, exactly. I will even go as far as on a daily basis when I’m taking my clients out I ask them the hypothetical question, "If you had to buy a house today from what we saw which one would you choose?" Just to help them fine tune and narrow down that selection, decision process. And to that end, we typically recommend that home buyers limit the home visits they do in any one day to five, maybe seven homes. We’ve seen the past that when you see many more homes than that the details of the homes kind of get mixed together and you go home and you say, "Okay, was it this one or that one that had that really nice staircase overlooking the loft?" You just can’t remember because there was so much to look at.
Mark Wozniak: Yeah and it’s tough to keep all those address straight in your mind, and the street names that you saw all sound unfamiliar to you.
Leigh Anne Monk: As a matter of fact what we do, Mark, when I take my clients out and it is actually kind of fun do to is we actually nickname the houses. We actually give each house a nickname and it maybe the "fantastic kitchen house" or the "stinky odor house," but we have added a real distinct feature to that house to help us remember and that goes a long to help folks keep the houses organized in their heads.
Now what we also recommend is if you’ve seen eight to ten houses and you haven’t seen anything you like then perhaps you might need to adjust your search criteria. You may have had too many things you wanted for the price range you’re in. For example, you may just not be able to find the things. It might be something as simple that if you go a little bit further away from the city then you might be able to afford more house for the money.
People have an idea about how much square footage they want and if they go out just five more miles all of a sudden they have homes in that criteria that fits for them. So don’t, my point there is to make sure you don’t say that your buying search criteria is set in stone. Feel free to adjust it as necessary. And then, finally, if you’ve gone beyond the ten to fifteen homes, we really would want you to continue to refine that search and be more discerning about what you need to have in a house now. I mean I would love to show everyone their dream home right away, wouldn’t you?
Mark Wozniak: Absolutely.
Leigh Anne Monk: And sometimes we might have to work up to it and so if you can’t have that dream home in your current situation, it’s best to get all the possible features that you can and save a couple for later for the next one.
Mark Wozniak: Yeah the reality of it is that we would love everyone to have the perfect home and I have yet to have a client that has found the absolutely perfect home, but this really is a great experience this home buying process, visiting these homes.
It’s really a matter of looking for the home that has the best set of features for what you’re looking for. There’s always a little bit of compromise involved, but we feel very confident that you will see the home that is right for you.
So this has been our segment on visiting homes. Next we’re going to talk about when you finally do find that home that you want to make an offer on determining the correct offer price.