- Have you spent all day touring homes with your agent and at the end of the day, you don’t even know what you saw?
- Are all the homes blurred together in your mind?
- Are you struggling to decide which home you like?
- Are you feeling overwhelmed that you can’t find the right house?
If so, this could boil down to you might be touring homes the wrong way. Here are my tips that can help you but first, we’ll need to start at the beginning:
Start your home search by using the right websites
In the Olympia area, the most accurate websites for home searching will be brokerage websites like my site, which is a Coldwell Banker site or Windermere, John L Scott, or Redfin. Third-party sites like Zillow, Trulia, and Realtor.com sometimes have errors and omissions. For example, homes that may be for sale don’t appear on those sites and homes that have already sold show up as available for sale. To get the right information and to make sure you are seeing all the homes available for sale, use a brokerage website. It’s impossible to make good decisions with bad information so start your online search on the most accurate websites.
Scheduling a home tour
On any of these sites today, you’ll see a “schedule tour” or “request a tour” button. Don’t click these buttons if we are working together and you are my client because it will send you to another agent. Instead, just let me know the homes you are interested in and then I can set up the home tour. Regardless if the home is vacant or occupied, appointments are required and I make these appointments with the sellers.
Ok, now that we have that housekeeping out of the way, let’s talk about touring.
What to look for when touring a home
When touring a home, you’re just going to see how the home flows, how rooms and spaces are connected and think about how you’ll live in the home. Start with that then you can look into the details of the home but first, just see if the home has the space and the rooms you want and need.
Next, look at the larger components of the home like the condition of the roof, the siding, the HVAC system. Look at the neighborhood, the neighbors, the lot, how the home is positioned on the lot. Look at the finishes of the home, the appliances, the condition of the fixtures like the sinks and toilets. If you don’t know what to look for, ask me. I can spot red flags and common issues that may be problematic.
Now all of this may seem super obvious but too many buyers do not tour homes this way. Here’s what usually happens.
What NOT to do when touring a home
Inspecting the home during the tour
When buyers tour a home, they often feel they have to do a home inspection at that time, and buyers start to feel overwhelmed because they don’t even know what to look for.
Keep it simple and just look at the home and imagine how you would live in the home. You can leave the home inspection to the professionals when the time comes. When buyers focus on doing their own home inspections during the home tour, they miss seeing the home as a whole and have no idea if that home can work.
Focusing on the seller’s possessions that do not convey
Focusing on the seller’s possessions is another what-not-to-do during a home tour. Granted, it can be very difficult to overlook a home with distractions like a messy home, a home that is filled to the gills with stuff or overflowing with personal décor, but focus on what stays with the home like the room sizes, the windows, layout, the updated kitchen, for example.
Bringing Non-Buyers with you on tour
The next biggest what-not-to-do-when-touring-a-home is bringing non-buyers with you. This is a polite way to say don’t bring your parents, children, friends, and pets when touring a home.
There are two main reasons for this:
One, these extra folks may be distracting you from looking at the home by chatting away instead of giving you a moment of peace for you to think. This is usually the #1 reason why some buyers will tell me after touring homes that they have no idea what they just saw because they were too distracted.
Second, too many times I see and hear all the bad advice, opinions, and just plain wrong information given to the buyer from friends and family. I’ve witnessed some crazy antics where the non-buyers believed they were helping the buyers by jumping up and down on a floor to see if the house was solid and built well, rolling marbles on the floor to determine if the home had settled, and knocking on interior walls to “hear” if the walls were load-bearing or not. This is all bad information for you and does not help you. It is a distraction and hampers you from making a decision.
Although these people are important to you, you love them, value their opinion, and you think they will help you make a good decision, their good intentions end up hurting you more than helping you. Invite them to your house-warming party instead.
How to deal with the fear of making a mistake
Buyers have a very legitimate fear that they will make the wrong choice and pick the wrong house. Buyers can overcome this fear easily by getting accurate and quality information, from the right people and the right sources. This can make the decision-making process much easier.
In conclusion, choosing the right home is easier than you think. Many buyers shoot themselves in the foot because they don’t have the confidence that they can make smart decisions. You can make smart decisions! Start with getting the accurate listing information from brokerage sites, limit distractions when touring a home so you can see and think clearly, and just look and observe. You will make a smart choice that you can be confident in. Plus, I’m here to help you!