Issue II: The Hunt
By Howard Taub, Certified Buyer Representative (CBR),
Realtor (R)
How Do We Start
the Search?
At family gatherings your relatives coach you on the process of finding
a home - driving countless agonizing hours to open houses and being dragged
to hundreds of horrible houses in distant towns by overzealous real estate
agents until you crack and buy a home.
There must be a better way...and there is. By thinking "oustide the
box" RealTime designed a method which totally changes the way you
can conduct your home-buying process. We started with the question, "What
is the best way to help people find the home they want?" and developed
a process to meet that goal.
We base our home-finding
concept on the process of design and engineering consulting. We elicit
and analyze the client's - your - needs, give you data to help match your
needs with the market, and search with you in a focused manner only in
the communities and for properties (solutions) in which you are interested.
We are housing consultants assisting you, the client, similar to engineers
in a design firm assisting clients.
Buyer brokers do not generally
list properties and are not trying to force you to buy that ramshackle ranch
being marketed two feet from the Southeast Expressway - we find out your
needs and locate the properties that match your requirements and dreams
- similar to generating an engineering design solution.
RealTime sits down with clients and listens to your needs. RealTime discusses
items such as the buyer's commuting requirements, neighborhood environment
desired, favored housing styles, and finally budget. Do you drive to work
on Route 128 North while your spouse takes public transportation to downtown
Boston? What kind of neighborhood to you desire? Do you want an area of
older Victorian homes within walking distance to the town library or do
you want to be secluded in a treed rural area? Do you prefer two-story living
with bedrooms on the second floor - Colonials, Capes, etc., or one-story
living such as
in ranch houses? Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and do some work
or do you want to move into a house which is updated and spotless? With
all these criteria laid out, we discuss your budget.
Based on this analysis we can pick out certain towns and neighborhoods within
those towns and search for the target houses in your budgeted price range
in those neighborhoods. A rule of thumb - once you focus on a general area
and an affordable price range, at any given time within each town there
are probably about half a dozen properties on the market that meet your
criteria. You can look at all those properties in one afternoon. If none
of the properties meets your needs, you wait for the next similar properties
to come on the market (typically one or two houses or condos per week).
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If after two to four weeks,
you find nothing that meets your objective, you should sit down with your
buyer broker and reassess your goals. Should you move over one community
to increase the number of properties in your price range? Is it unrealistic
to insist on having a two-car garage in an older community where most
houses have one-car garages?
Homework
Some people have no idea where to start. They are unfamiliar
with house sizes and types and communities and locations. They may be
starting the search from another state from which they are transferring.
Two ways to do some homework while contacting RealTime are discussed below.
The Internet...Let
Your Fingers Do the Walking
The internet has revolutionized the amount of information available to
all potential homebuyers. One useful site is "www.realtor.com."
This site has a subset of information from MultiList, or MLS, the shared
database used by brokers, and gives an indication of what types of properties
are available at various prices in communities. Beware though, this website
is updated periodically, and in an active market such as currently exists
in eastern Massachusetts, some listed properties will already be under
agreement. MLS, which brokers use, is real time and updated steadily throughout
the day. Also, the "realtor.com" site does not give street addresses
of listed properties.
Some large brokerages also have individual websites, but again, in an
active market the data lags the market. Many websites will keep properties
posted after the houses are under agreement. The houses remain to maximixe
interest, and thus draw your attention to the website.
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Open
Houses
Open houses, open to the public
for a few hours on a Sunday and sometimes on Saturday, are a quick way
to see what is available in different communities. Nationally, only 5%
of homes are sold via open houses. Why do brokers hold them, then? Because
the owners insist on having open houses and open houses are a good way
for selling brokers themselves to meet new potential customers. Otherwise,
brokers know that most of the people at open houses are just checking
out the house. (There are some noted local exceptions. Condos and starter
homes in Greater Boston are often sold from a Sunday open house by slightly
underpricing the property, drawing large crowds of interested parties
because the house is so "cheap," and generating a bidding war.)
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