how long did it take you to find your house?

antoinette Posted: May 27, 2003 04:08 PM

how long did it take you to find your house?

i know this has been asked before, but we are in the looking stage at this point and i was wondering how long/ how many houses did you look at before finding the ' one'

HappyEverAfter Posted: May 27, 2003 04:11 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

It took us about 4 months of serious looking, and we were looking at pricing/locations for about 6 months.

susans Posted: May 27, 2003 04:12 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

We looked for about 5 months then took a year off. Then looked another month or two before deciding to build.

Niecey Posted: May 27, 2003 04:14 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

I think we are not the norm....we took two months of very casual looking (open houses and neighborhood research) when we found the home we knew was the one. We weren't planning on seriously looking for a couple months..but we loved our house and couldn't let it pass (plus by then we knew how much junk was out there). We actually passed and said to wait but went back a couple weeks later and still loved it.

We also went from bid to close in about six weeks. We close on Thursday!!!

Scoop Posted: May 27, 2003 04:20 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

It took us about a year. We saw several houses, condos, co-ops, etc. before we made a final decision.

ss2002 Posted: May 27, 2003 04:21 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

Like susan, we looked for a month or two last year, then took a break.

We started looking again this past January. This time we were more serious...had our finances in order (and the wedding paid for!), had a better idea of what we wanted/didn't want in our dream house, etc.

We're going to contract tomorrow!

StayandJohn Posted: May 27, 2003 04:21 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

5 or 6 months, we saw so many houses....I cannot believe that people will show their homes when they look like a hurricane hit it!

ss2002 Posted: May 27, 2003 04:26 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

Stacey, I agree!! I just couldn't believe the way some people showed their homes (and the prices they asked).

One memorable home reeked to high heaven of cigar/cigarette smoke...I guess that happens when you leave overflowing ashtrays everywhere. Everywhere! There was even one in the bathroom. Hello? Empty them, open a window and spray some Glade when the RE agent calls that clients are coming by. We could barely walk through the whole house, we were sick!

februarybride Posted: May 27, 2003 04:29 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

We looked a long time - or at least we looked at a lot of houses before we found this one. I'd say we looked aggressively for around 6 months.

antoinette Posted: May 27, 2003 04:35 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

did you pass up on houses that you thought were 'doable' in hopes to find something better. i just feel like my real estate agent wants me to jump on anything that looks good because of the market. Im not comfortable doing that.

Kathy116 Posted: May 27, 2003 04:37 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

FI began about one year earlier, but we both got serious, and it took us about 5 months.

Jenny5150 Posted: May 27, 2003 04:40 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

A year. And like februarybride, we were aggressive in our search. (We had at least 3 realtors working for us.)

I'm glad we took the time and didn't rush into anything just for the sake of having a home. We really got a good feel for different neighborhoods/towns by driving around and looking at homes consistently.

I find it ironic that we live where we live. One day while I was driving around looking for a home, I got lost in a neighborhood. I had no clue where I was. I happened to be on the phone with a girlfriend of mine and I said 'Wow! It's beautiful in here. I wish I knew where the hell I was! I wonder if there are any homes for sale in here!?!' The latter part I said jokingly cause I didn't think we could afford the area. About 5 months later we purchased a home in the neighborhood I was talking about.

Edited to add:
We almost passed up the opportunity to view the home because we were interested in colonials only. (Our home is a ranch.) The realtor finally convinced us to check it out. I'm glad he did. We signed in the driveway ...and it was the first day they had put it on the market. We bought in a great neighborhood...the homes don't last a week around here. In fact, we get letters & phone calls from people interested in purchasing a home in our neighborhood/street quite often.

Niecey Posted: May 27, 2003 05:21 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

Antoinette - I think you have to have a good feel for the house. Do not let the realtor pressure you. I know in the couple months we were looking we saw houses we could afford and met most of our requirements but didn't give us the 'that is it' feeling so we passed them up and we found the one we love. Many realtors tried to say this is what you can get for XYZ amount of money. It made it very discouraging. This is a huge purchase and I would not jump into anything unless I felt it was a good thing. Of course, these past 6 weeks, DH and I are saying is this the right thing? - what did we do? but I think those are normal feelings. Everytime we go and visit the house we get such a great feeling - like this will be home!

curly2003 Posted: May 27, 2003 05:30 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

6 months of aggressive searching. Every single weekend.

WithThisRing Posted: May 27, 2003 05:36 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

We're building a house in FL.

We went in Feb of last year and looked at different models. We fell in love with the first model we saw. It was everything we could dream of, but continued to look at others.

We then went back in Sept and went back to our dream model and looked at other models that werent their in Feb and everything led back to that original model.

We are going again in June and our friends told us that new builders and model homes have been put up and they researched and checked it out for us this way we wont waste our time on things that are out of our budget or dont have what we are looking for.

They gave us the ok on models and builders and we plan on checking out our dream one and the new ones that have passed our friends research.

Hopefully by Sept of this year we'll have a definate house we want built and start construction by years end.

spel Posted: May 27, 2003 05:41 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

about a month of casual searching.

we were very lucky. we saw a lot of expensive crap, and then stumbled upon an amazing house.

closing took one month too.

Karen H Posted: May 27, 2003 07:12 PM

Re: how long did it take you to find your house?

About a month of aggressive looking every weekend - we were re-locating from MA and once I accepted the position offered to me we started searching right away. We were lucky to find something that would work for us - not perfect or ideal but lots of potential which we're working on making reality.