I'm so clueless - another before house shopping question

dandj Posted: Sep 22, 2003 04:21 PM

I'm so clueless - another before house shopping question

We are going to start looking in the next few months- I was just wondering how you got started. Did you just walk into a real estate store in the neighborhoods you wanted or look in the paper or go on recommendations?

I feel so clueless about this whole thing!

Jeanene Posted: Sep 22, 2003 04:26 PM

Re: I'm so clueless - another before house shopping question

A couple of months before we started looking we started surfing the real estate listing sites (e.g., www.mlsli.com) to get an idea of how the market was in certain areas.

Then we started doing day trips to towns we might consider to get a better idea of what the town had to offer. We also looked on-line into school, crime etc. for these areas.

Then finally we asked around for referrals for RE agents in the areas we had narrowed our list to.

Good Luck!

missmmpr Posted: Sep 22, 2003 04:43 PM

Re: I'm so clueless - another before house shopping question

We went to open houses in the areas that we were considering. I went on-line a lot and bascially just drove around and took down numbers off the sign on the lawn. I found my house on-line.

Niecey Posted: Sep 22, 2003 04:48 PM

Re: I'm so clueless - another before house shopping question

I felt so clueless too because we had no clue what neighborhood we wanted either.

If you just want to start getting your feet wet - I would start by going to open houses and real estate websites. We would look in the newsday and NY Times the night or two before and see what we could find in the neighborhood and then just do some random driving and followed real estate open house signs to houses. This started to give us a feel for what kind of houses were in the neighborhood and what we can get for our budget. We also would talk to various agents there and some were very helpful and some just wanted to push you to buy anything. This gave us the best idea...we actually would up finding our house thru open houses - never worked with just one agent.

Fran M Posted: Sep 22, 2003 05:10 PM

Re: I'm so clueless - another before house shopping question

We started out by picking a location. We based this choice on a number of factors: commute, school district, general knowledge of the area etc.

After the location we started going to open houses, going through the paper and looking online. We found most of the stuff online was already gone. Open houses are really great for education. The realtors are usually a great source of information about prices in the area, how the house they are showing fits into the area as far as age, style and condition goes, school districts, taxes etc.

ILT1221 Posted: Sep 22, 2003 05:28 PM

Re: I'm so clueless - another before house shopping question

After following all the recommendations above, I also suggest going to open houses. You will get a sense of what type of houses are available on the market and what the prices are based on condition, type of house, neighborhood etc. You will be surprised after you look for a while you get a good sense of pricing and overpricing.