Finding The Right Home For You

If you want to buy a home and it's your first time, you might be tempted to pick up one of those magazines with lists of realtors showcasing their properties for sale. I found that mostly they would high light one property that was really dirt cheap and when you called about it, it was no longer for sale, but they were eager to talk to you about other opportunities... it was like click bait but in magazine form. These magazines are fun to browse and can give you an idea of the Real Estate Agents out there and what they focus on: affordable properties, luxury dream homes, land up North... etc. But to actually see realistic examples of houses or condos for sale, it's not ideal...

So what do you do?

Realtor.ca is a great resource when house hunting! If I saw a place for sale, I could look it up by address and see how much it was and what it looked like inside according to their pictures. You can look in a geographical area you are interested in and see what's available. You can set your search to things like number of bedrooms or price range or keywords that are important to you like 'Fireplace'. It's awesome for day dreaming in a semi-tangible way and give you an idea what is out there and what prices are like.

To take things to the next level when we got serious about buying a home, we got the help of a realtor. I called a few at first and told them what we were looking for and they were able to sign us up for automatic emails with new listings from Realtor.ca. I was even able to request a few different search parameters and get two separate emails: one for houses up to $X amount and one for condos up to $Y amount (the condo price had to be lower because we needed to save some of our monthly housing budget for fees).

One thing I noticed right away was that the email listings from the Real Estate Agent had way more information than when I was just surfing on the site as a regular Joe/Joan Schmoe.

The most interesting new found detail to me was the 'Seller' information. If the seller was a bank, I knew this was going to be a different kind of transaction than a person or family. It meant that it was way more likely that no one living in the home for example: so the closing date would be easier to negotiate. Also, banks are less emotionally invested (usually!) than previous home owners and don't factor in family memories when putting a number on the price tag.

This is the map I made so I could search by postal codes

These V.I.P. emails also showed how long a listing had been on the market. If you watch shows like Property Brothers like I do, then you can understand why this factor provides leverage when negotiating the price. The longer a home has been on the market the more motivated the seller is likely to be.

When it came time to view open houses, I simply printed off the info page and brought it along. When we went to each home, I used the back of the page to write notes about the property. This was key because we were seeing a lot of places: it was great to have notes to look back on when reviewing.

In the end, for us, nothing came close to the square footage that was available in the condo we ended up choosing. There was so much work to do, but we felt that, since the price was so low compared to all the other options we saw, it was a no-brainer. We could always fix things, but we couldn't add more space.

In choosing the condo we did, so many of the things I had considered 'must haves' went right out the window. Size, amenities, building upkeep, and things like schools districts trumped backyards and fireplaces and even en-suite laundry if you can believe it! Price had to be affordable: we didn't want to be 'house poor' and we had to factor in things like loan repayments, and condo fees. Location included more than just distance to work: it was distance to family, local grocery stores, parks, and neighbouring buildings. Was it on a busy street? How far to the lake? What is the likely hood that development will obstruct our gorgeous views?

We made a great choice for us. We weren't as prepared for the renovations ahead as I thought we were, but I saved that story for this post: Tools We Didn't Know We Needed