It’s normal to enter the process of buying a home with visions of choosing your perfect home – a process of selection. It’s an opportunity to take control of your housing choices and you want to make the most of it. You want to choose ‘the one’ but in reality, buying is a process of elimination.
You set a list of criteria. You think of your favourite design styles and hope that you find a home that really speaks to you. This is going to be YOUR home. It’s a reflection of how you choose to live day-to-day and the persona you want to exhibit to yourself and your guests.
There’s a problem. I could show you exactly the home that checks all of your boxes and you probably wouldn’t buy it – at least not right away. You need to have seen something else, just to prove that this really is the one. Even in the best-case scenario where a home you love is waiting for you on the market, within your budget…You won’t know it’s the one unless you’ve eliminated other homes.
The Process of Elimination
Most of the time the best home for you isn’t ready and waiting on MLS. You go see a few. You get there in person, do a walk-through and learn that some neighbourhoods just feel different than expected. Certain vintages of homes kind of have the wrong floor plan for you. You might prefer bigger, but older. Maybe you prefer newer looking homes and those feel too small, and the new-ish big ones are super expensive. Limitations on what you can do, or how you can live in the home come to light and eliminate a huge sub-section of possibilities.
You need to see homes in person. Even a close match that you know you won’t buy, is still a home you need to see. Get to know what quality of materials exist in your budget. Find out how much is ‘wrong’ with the homes you see and how much that will cost to remedy. It might start to change the way you look at your budget.
You could see 4 or 5 homes on your first tour and find reasons why each of them aren’t quite the right fit. See another 3 homes a week or two later, cross them off and now you’re really narrowing things down. By week three you see listings on MLS and know immediately that they aren’t right for you. This is where the process of elimination is really becoming effective. You’re not stalking and over-analyzing online listings. You know which ones are real contenders and you know you need to see them soon, before someone else who is also educated on the market snatches it up.
I wouldn’t say that you’re being picky at this point. You just know what works and the things that really don’t. Use that to your advantage. This is a point where your agent might tell you that the right match is the kind of property that doesn’t come up for sale on a regular basis. You will need to wait, watch, and be ready to pounce when it happens. You might also be on the lookout for the kind of home that tends to come along on almost a monthly basis. Again, be ready to pounce, but with the comfort that you’re hopefully taking action pretty soon.
The biggest trap is trying to wait it out until a unicorn appears. This is the part when you really need to be honest with yourself and what you should expect to find in your budget. The buyers who get this wrong take the process of elimination one step too far into the budgetary realm. They have eternal hope that the home they love will one day come on the market for less than it’s worth. I’m sorry to say that it’s a nice way to tour inside homes you love, but not a good way to buy one. The dream home you’re waiting for is always going to be the home someone else has been waiting for as well. They’re probably going to step up and pay a fair (strong) price for it. The good homes always sell.
The Best Path to Success:
Get to know the market early on in your search. See them in person. Don’t stalk listings online until the day you see the right one. It will sell – to someone else. You will almost certainly hesitate because you haven’t seen anything else to compare it to. I used to see this all the time, until I started educating buyers to get out early and often. Armed with market knowledge, you will be ready to make a confident decision when the time is right.