Choosing your buyer’s agent is like hiring someone to work for you.
You have several opportunities to determine whether the agent is a good fit before you sign your buyer agency agreement. Take advantage of these interview opportunities.
There is a great list of questions to ask your agent before working with them. In addition to these questions, here are a few other “tests.”
1) How fast does your agent get in touch with you after you call them? What was this experience like?
Did you sit on hold for 10 minutes before finally leaving a voice mail? How long did it take for the phone call to be returned? If it took longer than a few hours, did they explain why, indicating that this will not be typical? (“I apologize for the delay, I was showing homes to a client,” etc.). If you contact an agent and do not hear back from them right away, and I mean at the longest within a few hours, this is a bad sign. If they are not anxious and prompt to earn your business, they will probably not be prompt once they have your business and you have a question.
2) How was your overall experience with this person, and what was your overall impression?
Should you choose your agent based on how many compliments they pay your child, and how hard they laugh at your jokes? Of course not. But, you should get along with them. You will be spending many of your weekend hours with this person, and telling them some personal information about your finances, hopes and dreams etc. The more honest you can be, the better they can help you.
Also, if the agent is overwhelmingly “sales-ey”, he or she might be a good person to keep in mind when it is time to sell your home. An honest and straightforward agent will be better to work with when you are a buyer.
3) Go through a home with your agent.
Ask them questions about the home. They should know more about homes than you – they are the professional, after all. If they have absolutely nothing negative to point out about the home, you might start questioning the agent’s integrity and motives. There is no such thing as a “perfect” home. Your absolute dream house will still probably have a few pros and cons. To make a good decision, you need to be aware of the cons too.
Develop a “Dream Home List.”
My husband and I had developed a list of characteristics to help find our future home when we first started house hunting. We defined “must” haves and “want” to haves. The list included everything from price range, to age of home, to location, to basic floor plan. We each wrote our own list, without consulting the other, and then combined lists to come up with the Master Dream Home List.
House hunting once you have defined your list goes a little something like this: tri level (great condition), tri level (terrible condition,) tri level with extra bedroom. In other words, we looked at the “same” house over and over again; with minor differences, like location of a bathroom.
Take a look at some “curve balls.”
Our “curve ball” was completely different from every house we had seen. It was by far the most charming home, with the most character. It was quite a bit older than all the others. My husband fell in love with it. I was terrified of it. Character and charm are the reason that I have lived without a dish washer for the last 5 years. I’m over character and charm. I’m a mom now. In other words, I want the minivan of homes.
But, this house had hardwood floors… everywhere. The closest thing to hard wood we had seen so far was Pergo. It had this beautiful molding with a fancy name that I can’t remember. It also had an incredible backyard that looked like the Secret Garden. The trouble is, where he saw beauty I saw work. Where he saw room for our family to grow, I saw money that we don’t have. Yes, it was the money pit.
When house hunting reveals that you and your loved one are from different planets…Go back to your List.
Dinner conversation became stressful after we saw that house. “Let’s talk about the house!” We’d both say, each of us thinking “Oh good, I’m glad you’ve come around.”
Then, we’d look at each other. Blink in disbelief. “How can you not love this house?” (him) , “How can you still love it???” (me). It was sad too, because I could tell he really loved it, in a way that he hadn’t loved any of the others. Of course I wanted him to have his dream home. It’s just, I thought we had the same dream home in mind, and suddenly we’re from a different planet.
To be fair, this home did have many of the things we wanted on our list… it was just a different interpretation than we had seen before. On the other hand, this home also threw a good part of our list out the window.
Be prepared to make changes to your list as you learn more about homes.
For example, one thing on our list was “a reasonable commute to work.” 25 minutes without traffic is not reasonable when you have seen a home that has a 5 minute commute, with traffic. Before the curve ball, we didn’t realize how great it would be to be closer to his work.
I also didn’t realize how much the good school and safe location mattered to me until the home he loved had a bad school and a scary location (I’m a sissy).
So our list evolved, and we made compromises. (Ah, marriage.) 10 minute commute, older house, a touch of charm, and incredibly practical. The new, improved list directed us to the perfect home, in a location we had completely blown off before because the houses were “too old”.
Learn what really matters to you by taking a look “outside the box” of your Dream Home List.
We uncovered and defined the elements of a home that were really important to each of us by viewing a curve ball house. We didn’t know before because all of the other homes had been the same with only moderate differences. Sometimes it takes the extreme to realize what really matters.
After looking at what feels like a million homes with our exclusive buyer’s agent, we became very efficient house hunters. At first, it was hard to strip away the bad decorating or the incredible upgrades to the bathroom and see the house for what it really was. Over and over again, I keep hearing this advice “Look at the things that you can’t change.” Again, I have to go back to a dating comparison. Don’t get blinded by make up or abs, those will fade or flab. Fall in love with the character. And so it is with a house. New carpets and shiny tile is hard to ignore. But, sometimes it can be blind you from issues that you just can’t change, like a caving in basement. . .
How do you determine the “character” of the house? Here is what I have learned:
1) Location, Location, Location
You knew this one would be here. But, let me explain it a little further. For us, the ideal location means classic suburbia to start our family. For you, it might mean being in the center of urban excitement. Just remember “you can’t pick up the house and move it.” In other words, you can change the bathroom, but you can’t change the neighborhood.
2) Integrity of The Structure
The Structure is a vague, first time home buyer’s way of saying: is this house going to collapse? That is an exaggeration, but as our buyer’s agent explained to us, there is a lot of movement in Colorado soil. For a home buyer, this means your house can “move” which can crack the foundation…or worse. If it weren’t for our buyer’s agent, I would not have known that the steel posts in the basement were there because at some point the basement wall started to cave in. If you don’t know the signs of structural damage (which I did not), I would suggest that you house hunt with someone that does.
3) Floor Plan
Is there room in the kitchen for me and my husband to cook without bumping in to each other? Is there a bathroom in a more private place than off the living room? Is there a place for guests to sleep? Is the baby’s bedroom close enough to her over-protective mother? Is there room for a future pool table and man cave? Surely, your questions will be different than mine, but you get the idea.
4) General Maintenance of the Home
Was this house loved or was it neglected and carrying a lot of baggage from the previous owner? I wanted a house that had been loved. I have a newborn, a job, a new marriage, and do not want to add on to the list: a fixer upper. On the flip side, there could be a lot of investment potential with a home that needs work. The key here is to think about what kind of time investment you are willing to make.
5) Move in Ready, Cosmetics Only or Needs Work
In other words: can you move into the house exactly the way it is, or will you need to invest time and money to make it livable? In the beginning of the search, we wanted “move in ready,” which we thought meant “new kitchen, new bathrooms.” That’s because I didn’t take into account fun things like roofs, and heating systems, and oven ranges. So by the end, we decided on “working kitchen, new roof.”
This was one of the biggest benefits that we had from working with an exclusive buyer’s agent. Our agent could point out future repairs and even give us a ball park figure of how much that type of repair would cost. So, we were able to get a more realistic idea of “all possible repairs” and determine which ones we did not want to worry about, and which ones we were okay with.
If you are getting ready to buy a home in Colorado and would like to have experience on your side, click here to get started.
Our House Gained Twenty Pounds since the Listing Picture was taken.
I realized that house hunting through listings is probably what it’s like to use an online dating service. Yeah, you look incredible in your profile picture- but that was taken when you’re 18 and now you’re 40. Or, it says here that you like long walks on the beach… but, you look like you haven’t gone on a walk in a decade.
And so it goes with house hunting.
The first house we looked at was… discouraging. This sort of shabby house is the sunny, beautiful, glowing house from the picture? Do we have champagne taste on a beer budget? (Something I laughed about during our meeting, oh HA HA, of course we are being completely realistic about what we can afford. Isn’t it silly when people don’t understand that better things cost more?) Is the house we want way outside our budget? Are we destined to be renters forever….Noooooooo.
Some things that you just can’t tell by looking at the picture: what is the neighborhood like? Can I imagine raising my little one here? What was the home owner like? Did they trash the house or did they carefully maintain the house?
Our exclusive buyer’s agent did something very surprising.
While viewing our potential houses, he pointed out both the good and the bad. He has experience in construction too, which is proving to be incredibly valuable. As we’d walk through the house he’d say: “This roof needs to be replaced in 3-5 years, the windows have water damage and the floors need to be refinished. The bathroom is newly remodeled, and they did a great job with it because the refurbished tub reaches all the way to the ceiling, protecting the wall from water damage.”
Because our EBA was so straight with us about the down sides, I completely trust him about the up sides. There was a downside and an upside to every house we looked at- that’s how life is I guess. In fact, now that I am a seasoned house hunter (wink), I would say that if there is no down side, the agent is not telling the whole story.
The next two houses changed the tone of the evening.
What great finds! Who knew we could afford to live somewhere that had granite countertops?! Yes, ups and downs with each, but this time the ups far outweighed the downs, and I think we could probably be happy with either one. I loved the neighborhoods, I loved the floor plan, and I loved the idea that we might be a home owner in Colorado. We drove home imagining ourselves living in each one, and you know what, it felt great.
While I don’t think we found The One yet, I really feel like we will!
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