Step 4: The Hunt.

Step 4: The Hunt.

Honestly, this is the best part. I downloaded all the home buying apps on my phone. My two favorites were Zillow- which whenever we were driving around and saw a house was for sale, I was able to just pull up the app and it would show where we were on the map and what house was for sale and how much is was going for.
My main favorite app was Realtor. I had my favorite search saved and every day (more like 5x a day) I would go into the app and check out what was new. As soon as we saw a house that we like, I called our realtor and we set up an appointment for later that day. In this market, and in our price range we were looking in, you HAD TO ACT FAST! There would be new homes posted that day and I would text my realtor and she would say the house was already sold.
Come up with a dream list... that will help you be able to quickly filter through which houses to go see and which houses to pass on.

My dream list included these things:

• close to my parents- that was the whole reason why we moved out here and I didn't want to live 30 minutes away from them
• close to the freeway- with Dan's and my work, we need to have fast access to the highway for our commutes
• not have a back alleyway- here in Texas, a lot of houses have back ally's were you have your garage. I don't like that.
• I wanted a pool- at first I didn't think this mattered, but after spending my first summer here and realizing how freakin' hot it is, I knew a pool would be the only way to get the kids to play outside
• I wanted two stories- I don't know why, I just did.
• I wanted four bedrooms- three just seemed like we would grow out of it too fast
• I wanted to be close to a park- I want to be able to walk to a park that my future kids can play in
• I want to live in a neighborhood where the elementary school is walking distance
• I wanted bricked
• I wanted granite in the kitchen
• Updated appliances
• Updated master bath

Here were some of the homes we went to look at:



 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The last pictures were from the first house we put an offer on. I loved this little house. I instantly pictured my future family growing up there, swimming in the pool, cooking, Christmas, parties. I had plans right away with how to decorate... we put our offer in and I was CRUSHED to find out that we didn't get it. I went into a mild depression spell... I felt like all my dreams were shattered.
Looking back on this moment, I was being so silly. I had come up with a dream list and this house really didn't meet the majority of my dreams. We offered $1,500 over the asking prices and offered to pay our closing costs. I later found out that this house sold for $700 UNDER the asking price. I am so gratefully that we ended up not getting this house because we would have never found the house we live in now!

One thing to keep in mind, pictures do AMAZING things to homes. Every time I fell in love with a house online, I was quickly disappointment with how small the house ended up being in person. Pictures can be deceiving! Go into each house with an open mind and tell yourself that it will not look as big as it does in pictures!

Anther tip, look the house up on google maps before going to go see it. One house we went to see we fell in LOVE with because it had a great big backyard with an amazing pool, big bedrooms, updated master bath, but it fell on a really busy and noisy street. I was hard to pass on this house, but I knew that years down the road I would be really bugged by all the noise.