Homeowners...how long before you found your house??

My FI and I just started looking just to get an idea of where we want to live, what type of house etc....

Just wanted to know what your timelines were from when you started to when you finally became proud homeowners

TIA

It was over a year for us.

We started looking in the area where we were renting. I'd say we looked for 3+ months and learned that we didn't like the area or community. It's not that it was a bad area, we just didn't like the feel.

Then we started looking a little further north near Huntington and for the most part loved the communities in the surrounding area. 5 bids later, we now live in Huntington.

We got lucky. I'd been looking on the 'net for a while. There was one house DH and I loved, but it was close to the wedding and time was an issue (since we were also looking an hour away from our current apt.). I called about it after the wedding and it was in contract.

There wasn't much that I saw between Oct. and Feb. that I absolutely loved. In late Feb. we finally decided to just get out there. We saw a few condos because we wanted to keep all our options open. The next week we went out and saw 5 houses. We put a bid on one of those houses, which was accepted.

On the one hand, I did wonder if we should have seen more houses. OTOH, I had spent so much time online looking that I knew that the house we got was a good deal for the money. Everything we looked at that day in person was in the same price range, give or take a little, and to me, it far surpassed the others in every way- the neighborhood, the house itself, the proximity to things.

We were also lucky to buy from people who just needed to sell. They could have gotten a little more for the house, probably.

Thanks ladies

about 3 months for us