Agent Smith and I started looking for a proper house in early 2014. We started checking out real estate listings online, hitting a few open house, researching various areas and issues related to the idea of buying property. This process was rather difficult because we had one singular requirement above all else, the new home must have an extensive garage or even two garages.
By mid 2014, we’d met a few agents that were so-so and one that was just awesome. Thankfully the former agreed to help us out. Our routine was a bit non-traditional in that we would find properties that looked interesting on our favorite real estate site, flag them for review, consult with one another and if there was a scheduled open-house we’d go see it. If there was no open house in the immediate future, we’d consult some more and if it still looked somewhat promising, we’d ask our agent to show us the house. Granted, this process took a bit to refine and our poor agent did end up showing me several houses that were just terrible, but we got much better at minimizing this sort of time wasting by looking more closely at all the photos in a listing and figuring out the floor plans from photos as well as elevations and surroundings via Apple Maps.
In February and March of 2015 we found a couple of houses that were close but not quite there. One ticked all the boxes except that there was absolutely no network connectivity available (except satellite) and one was too expensive considering we’d have to demolish the existing garage. Then in late March, Redfin’s suggestions popped up new property in a locale I’d previously ruled out. Yet when I looked at the images and saw the “garage”, I knew we may have found a serious contender. Thirty days later we were nervously working with out agent to negotiate its purchase.
Which brings us to now. We are set to close on the “new” place tomorrow. A nice 50 year old property in need of some TLC, but structurally sound and, I hope, looking forward to us moving in and taking care of it.