Owning your home search, home buyer tools at finger tips [Part I]
Dear home buyer,
As of 2019, 9 out of 10 homes were purchased with an agent.
As of 2019, 6 out of 10 homes were found by the buyer:
50% of these were found by searching online.
The rest were found via open house signs, friends, or a home builder.
Both key statistics above have steadily increased over the last decade.
Source: NAR
We believe the modern home buyer is here and here to stay. Enabled by online tools, more than often they are the ones who start the home search. After all, the buyer knows their desires best.
Today to support this behavioral shift, agents provide stronger guidance and support in the execution of the home purchase. They use their experience to provide timely counsel to buyers, creating the most value by educating them about blind spots during the purchase process.
Below are some telltale signs of the modern home buyer and how they own their home search. The best homes go first, so its best to be on the cutting edge. The below can all be done with the click of a button:
Subscribe for daily emails:
1. Sign up to receive daily home listings which may be a match for you. Ask us! Also, feel free to sign up with Redfin, Zillow, or Realtor.com. Try not to keep parameters too broad, sometimes less is more!
Tools to use to hone in on the listing:
2. Use Google maps to approximate distance to desired locations such as restaurants, transit, grocery stores, place of work, and places of worship.
3. Use Google street view to visualize neighborhoods, busy streets, and nearby amenities.
4. Use past nearby home sale pricing, home sale history, living square footage, and acreage to identify potentially overpriced or underpriced homes.
5. Use simple online mortgage calculators, estimated property taxes, estimated homeowner's insurance and HOA fees (if applicable) to evaluate affordability. Use our Nuhom created Home Purchase Calculator to budget what it will cost to own your home:
6. Use listing photos and virtual tours to decide if the home style is of interest – colonial, contemporary, modern, renovated or something else. Photos mean a 1000 words, videos mean even more!
7. Use listing photos and virtual tours to decide if the home offers the space desired by living square footage, room square footage size, and visuals of indoor and outdoor space.
8. For investment properties or buyers looking to rent out space or bedroom use Rentometer or Airbnb to determine the rent they can get and how it helps financials.
9. Use the town or city assessor’s website and property website to better approximate property taxes than the listing displays and nearby construction projects which could play a role in your decision making.
10. Use Google compass to get a sense of where the sun rises to better understand the orientation of the home. Sunlight is an important criterion for many buyers!
Be ready to make an offer:
11. Get a pre-approval in place if you're intending on buying with a mortgage so you know what you can afford. This is needed before submitting a real offer.
There are many more simple solutions home buyers use to judge listings and the home itself. Wait for Part II!
Nuhom offers home buyers in the Boston area a great solution when you work with their buyer agents. Furthermore, we reward the modern home buyer for their search efforts.
Nuhom is a Boston based full-service real estate tech company making home buying convenient, fast, and rewarding. We have dismantled the traditional home buying process and replaced it with innovative technology, far fewer hurdles, and more savings for the home buyer. Learn more at www.nuhom.co