Homeowners: How Picky Were You?

[Floridaman999]

My wife and I gave up trying to find what we wanted and just decided to build our own with help. We didn't actually build it. The help we got was with designing and creating the prints for the builders. The builders actually built it.

 

[holden]

We were very picky with our first and second (current) homes. I was much younger (23 for the first and 28 for the second) when we bought those.

If I were to shop now, I think I would be less picky. Certain things would be non-negotiable (location, for example), but I could see renovating any house to suit our needs now. I didn't feel that way when I was in my 20s.

 

[msjprincess]

We bought in 2004. It was the height of the sellers marker where we live. We couldn't afford to be picky. Houses were selling almost immediately. The MLS site updated at the same time every day. I would log on 5 minutes earlier and keep hitting refresh. If anything came up new I would make an appointment right away. We probably looked at 20 houses. Our only must haves were still least 3 bedrooms, a garage and either an eat in kitchen or a dining room. It was still hard to find something in our price range that met our needs.

 

[DVC-Don]

This past house purchased in 2013 took us about 3 months. We'd look at a half dozen homes each weekend with our realtor. When we purchase our Florida vacation home we did it in the fall of 2010 and looked at maybe 15 homes in two days. There were a lot of good deals then. Back in 1991 we were very picky (having two small children) and had one built to our specs.

 

[mamamary]

Between 10 and 15 I’d say. We lived out of state so it was hard. If I were looking now I’d be way more picky.

 

[orangecuse]

1st house- probably looked at maybe 20ish? All in one weekend as we had come in from out of state to look.

2nd/current house- a little different as we kind of browsed online as we waited for our 1st house to sell. We saw maybe 5 in person total I believe. I think it was less because we had a really good understanding of what we liked/didn’t like because we already owned a house (so we were much pickier about what we would even go see in person).

 

[ImDMous]

I think we probably looked at 20 over 2 weekends. We put an offer on one that was a short sale (this was in 2009 and there were a lot of those around at the time). Thankfully, that did not come to fruition and we found our house the second time we went out. We saw it once, liked it but still had a list of others so we kept going. At the end of the day, our realtor suggested we go back and we wandered around and poked and prodded. She asked us "so, is this the one?". And it was, although I didn't realize it until she asked. Good thing she was smarter than we were.

 

[FairestOfThemAll37]

I’m currently waiting to close (double finger crossies) on my first house. I looked at four houses but the last two were just because we had already set up the showings. I put the offer in on the second house I saw. Who knows how I’ll feel after a few years haha. But, I know how I wanted to use the various rooms, it was the right size and the space felt comfortable.

I knew I’d be changing out everything but the cabinets/layout in the kitchen, redoing all the bathrooms, and putting in new flooring in several rooms to fit my aesthetic preferences.

Seeing as I was only interested in staying in my neighborhood, who knows how many houses and how long it would have taken to find a house that was right both aesthetically and layout/bones/space wise.

 

[TipsyTraveler]

We looked at about 10 before buying our first house. The bar was set so low — we just wanted a 3 bedroom townhouse with walk-out basement and a fenced-in yard. The fact that it took the realtor 10 tries to come up with that was pretty pathetic.

We’re in the process of relocating. We’re much pickier this time around and are in no rush. We’ll be renting an apartment in our new area and just waiting for the right one to pop up.

I was telling my husband that I bet house hunting is going to be very different this time around. The first time, we had to go in-person with the realtor to see a home. This time, we’re looking online and eliminating them left and right without having to waste anybody’s time. I imagine by the time we actually go see a house in person, it’ll be because we’re already fairly confident it’s “the one.”

 

[ronandannette]

When we bought this one we'd only seriously looked at 4 or 5, and that was over a period of about a year. We knew exactly what we wanted and there was only a few neighbourhoods we'd consider. It was an extremely hot seller's market at the time and suitable prospects in our price range were scarce. If we hadn't found the little gem we now own we just would have kept on looking.

Theoretically, in a buyer's market, there are tons of choices. If that had been our situation there's no telling how many we would have looked at. @Julie's Haircut - what are their circumstances? Budget constraints? Too many choices? Not enough? I can see being pretty tentative if it was my first home.

 

[runwad]

I think we went out with our realtor 2 saturdays, maybe looked at 10 to 15. I was real picky! I don't have an eye, so if I walked into a house that needed remodeled, I couldn't see the potential.

When we walked in this house (still in our 1st house) our realtor said she knew we were going to buy it because it was the first one I didn't turn my nose up to. But this house was $20k above what we wanted to spend, but we got them down 15k and bought it.

 

[RedAngie]

Current house. I looked at about 15 over a three month period. There was really no time constraint but I didn't want to wait too long. There were three that met all my criteria and I made up my mind after the third visit to the one I ended up buying.

First house back in 1989 took about six months and about two dozen viewings.

Second house in 1999 seemed to take forever. ExH and I must have looked at 50 houses before deciding.

Someone above mentioned thousands. That seems what it took my parents to decide when they bought the house we moved into when I was a tween. They were looking for at least four years, off and on. I myself probably visited about two dozen houses along with them. There was a certain subdivision they liked, but could never make up their minds. They probably went back at least a dozen times to see the samples. Then they went back again and discovered the neighborhood was sold out and only a few of the models remained, but not the style they wanted. They finally bought one of the few remaining sites available in the neighborhood where my father's older brother lived. Thousands would be an exaggeration but it was easily two to three hundred.

I bought the first one that I looked at. I've been here over 25 years.

First and ONLY one you looked at? Or first among the several you looked at?

 

[Kathryn Merteuil]

I believe we had looked at about 6 before finding "the one".

 

[wenrob]

Not picky at all, we looked at a lot of houses but for us it was a matter of waiting for the right house to come on the market. What we were looking for wasn't staying on the market for more than 24 hours in the area we wanted to be in, so as soon as something showed up we jumped on it.

That’s pretty much what happened with this house. We knew what and where we wanted and that work would need to be done to make it ours. We saw it once, went back and forth all day and offered more than asking right out the gate the next day. I think that and that we had cash won it for us because they had two other offers. It had only been on the market three days. My kids didn’t even have to change schools. No regrets. Well, I’d have more closet space but the trade off wouldn’t be worth it.

 

[DisneyHardin]

I've bought 3 houses. The first 2 were while I was still single and each time I probably looked at 10 or so houses. I lived in a small town then, so there were only so many houses in my price range. I then got married and moved to a big city. I first moved into the house DH already owned, but we quickly decided it was too small and started looking for something else. We probably looked at 15 or so. We started looking as soon as we put ours on the market thinking we would have tons of time because this was in 2009, during a major slump in the housing market. Ours went under contract in 9 days and they wanted closing in 30 days, so we were under a time crunch to choose something. The house we chose wasn't my first choice, but it was DH's. I'm not too picky, so it was fine.

 

[ThisIsJason]

Knew the complex we want to be in. Looked at four condos. The first one didn't have the finished basement, so it was down a bedroom. The second had the finished basement but not the sun room. The third and fourth had what we wanted but we went with the third because trees bumped up the the property and nothing would be built behind us. The other had more condos behind it.

 

[indimom]

We built our first house. Second house, we looked at probably 30 homes? That was in 2003. And it was a major renovation after we moved in.
We're looking for our retirement home now. We've been looking for over a year, and have walked through maybe 15-20 at this point?
I freely admit I'm being picky, but I refuse to move for anything less than the right house... I can handle small updates or renovating one room or finishing a basement, but I'm not up for a gut job. It's possible we will have to buy land and build to meet our criteria. But I'm still hopeful we can find a place that ticks all the boxes.

 

[MrsJackSparrow4Life]

I don’t remember how many houses we actually looked at but it probably would have been more if I wasn’t so picky about location. If the house wasn’t located in the circle I put on the map, I wouldn’t even look at it.

Took us about 6 months to find a house in the right location, put an offer in and close.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

Well we didn't look at houses perse. We looked at floor plans, spec homes and model homes since we were building. I truly don't know how many of that combination we looked at but it was a lot. I did have a 3-ringed binder of house plans that were stronger contenders along with information from the builder.

There was an advantage that we have twice a year (Spring and Fall) a Parade of Homes where builders open up their spec homes and neighborhoods open up their model homes for longer hours. If you have a floor plan you like it can help visualize things if you can see it in person. A good portion of our initial house hunting took place in the Fall Parade of Homes where we went all over the place in the metro on both sides of the state line. We didn't get really serious though until a few months after that though.

 

[Aimeedyan]

They sound like my FIL. We are convinced househunting has become his retirement hobby and he will end up dying in the starter home he is still in because there is something wrong with every house he looks at. MIL and realtor finally convinced him to build what he wants so now he also looks at land for sale and so far, every piece of land also has something wrong with it!

For us, we have bought 3x and each time flew in, looked at houses over 2 days time, bought the best option on the market. Our realtors were great at filling those 2 days so I would guess we looked at 20/30? Some were drive-bys we didn't bother going in. But each time, the city we were moving to was new, too, so we had to quickly narrow down where we wanted to live.

I do tend to second guess myself a lot, esp with big purchases, so if we had the luxury of a slow househunt I probably would have been much less decisive. But I've never had that luxury