SEARCHING FOR YOUR FIRST PROPERTY

Picture this: you are finally in a place where you can think about buying your first home. A big financial commitment sounds nerve-racking, right? Don't be afraid! I am here to share with you some advice to help you through that big step.

One of my dreams, since I began my professional career, was to own a property. I started my due diligence, reading about real estate in my area, and talking to people that had done this before. I found the process to be a little confusing and overwhelming, which is why I decided to share with you some of the things I learned through it to help your journey of buying your first real estate property.

“...think about your priorities when it comes to what you want.”

Tech Tools for Beginners

First off, think about your priorities when it comes to what you want. For me, it was important to find a place where I could feel at ease, secure, in a nice neighborhood that was a short distance from my workplace, and well within budget. As I started my journey, I was drawn to using apps because of their easiness to find properties throughout the day using my phone. That is not to say I didn't use websites as well in a computer to start my research. You can use as many tech tools out there to help you search for that particular property you are looking for.

I had the opportunity of working closely with Zillow and Realtor apps, which were very user friendly and accurate. I’ve also heard of Redfin as a searching tool and, although I didn’t use it closely my first time, it's also very easy to work with. The way these apps work is you enter the name of the city and state or the zip code of the area you are interested in living, then all available listings will show as a result. Zillow and Realtor are very similar in the way they show you the property’s information. You see the house listings with the initial picture, you click on the property that interests you, and the app will show you specific information on the property (tax history, details of the property, schools that are close by the area, some of them you can slide your way into seeing pictures of the inside of the house, etc.). There is also the option of filtering the information to search for specific details you are looking for in a property making it easier to narrow your search. Another cool things about these apps is that they give you the opportunity to open an account with them, which allows the benefit of saving your searches and having them notify you whenever something new comes out in your desirable area.

Another search tool you can use when you're starting is websites. While Zillow and Realtor worked very similarly, Redfin's website differed in a good way from these two. I found navigating through this site to be easier and quicker to get the information I needed since the user interface on this website is a little bit different. Instead of having to click on each house to see its information, you can search your area of interest, filter the information by clicking on the ‘Table’ option in the result dashboard, then clicking the subcategory of your choosing (Address, Location, Price, etc.) You will find the area map stays in view in one half of the screen, while you'll have the listings of properties available in the other side of the screen. There is one more site I used, in combination with any of these above, to do my research and this is Trulia. While I found the property information wasn't as up-to-date as the first three sites above, it has a very valuable feature I loved about it and is worth mentioning here. When you click on a property you are interested in, you can filter the map section to show the level of crime around the area of the house you are interested in. I didn't use it much to search what was currently available in the market but, whenever I liked something I found in Zillow or Realtor, I would open the Trulia page and search for the address only to use this feature. All of these sites and apps are very good tools that can help you on your search.

Now, while these sites have very good tools to search for that diamond in the rough house you are looking for, you also need to beware of contacting a buyer’s agent instead of the listing agent. These apps provide the option of contacting a buyer’s agent to basically schedule you for that first showing of the property. What you don’t know about this is that these realtors will want to help you, not just with the scheduling of that particular property, but through the whole process any way they can. They get your information from these apps, and they call you insistently, and send emails every week to see whether you have a property in mind or not among other things. So, unless you are one hundred percent committed into buying, you don’t have a realtor yet, and you wish to work with their suggested agent, my recommendation is do not ask for a scheduling visit with them. I was amazed by the number of follow-ups I received after submitting two or three questions through these apps. Yes... I was looking to buy a property, but I only had a couple of questions about the properties I liked. I wasn’t expecting them to call or email me every week to see if I was still searching or needed help in finding a property.

Enjoy the Ride

Another tip for you, once I found places I might be interested in buying, I hopped in my car and drove by them. Searching online is the first step, but it is not nearly enough. In my adventure searching for properties, I realized that a lot of properties with great photos instantly became my point of interests only to be let down as soon as I parked in front of their driveway. I didn’t even have to get out of my car to know that these were a definite ‘no’ on my list of prospects. For example, some of them the area wasn't exactly what I was looking for, others the complexity to get in and out of the community the house was situated in was something I also took into consideration, the points of interests around the place became another of my concerns; in the end, these are things a drive thru can simply help you reach a decision on the house before wasting your time scheduling a visit. This is not to say that all houses listed with pretty photos aren’t worth visiting, but it did save me the trouble of calling my realtor to schedule a visit at places where the area alone made me decide against them. Keep in mind that anything inside the house is something you can change anytime you want to… you can’t change the area though unless you decide to move out.

I hope this information has been helpful to you in deciding to give that first step into property ownership. Do not discourage yourself in giving that second step towards it. It's a very gratifying feeling to own your own property whether it is as an investment or simply to live in. Subscribe to know more tips and pointers about getting your first property and follow me on my next post where I will write about my next step in prequalifying for my first property.

Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Realtor, Redfin, Trulia, or Zillow neither any of them pay me to do this blog posting. I'm merely expressing my experience with these sites as a way of helping others understand part of the process of buying a property.