Tips To Help Find The Perfect Home
Finding a new home is, on the one hand, exciting, but on the other, it can be incredibly stressful. Here are five quick tips to consider when you’re hunting for your perfect home to help keep you on the right track towards a practical and smart decision.
New Home Budget
This is the first step you need to pin down before moving onto the other tips.
Define an affordable budget based on your salary. It’s advised you spend no more than 28% of your wages on the mortgage per month.
What Do You Need?
You should have a few non-negotiables to work with before embarking on your house hunt.
These should include what you need, not what you want. Outlining your requirements will form the basis for your entire search and help your real estate agent find appropriate properties.
Find A Real Estate Professional
Professional real estate agents have their eyes and ears open in all the right places in the property world. And they will work hard to source a pool of properties based on your specific requirements.
Real estate agents take most of the hard work out of finding you a home. While also providing you helpful advice and access to relevant and useful information sources on your search. For instance, the Portland Real Estate Blog helps those searching for a new home in the Portland area.
Is There Room To Grow?
When you view properties, don’t just think about now or the next year living in your new abode. Think about how it will cater to you and perhaps your family in the years to come.
When house hunting, often people limit themselves by purchasing a home that suits their needs now, leaving little to no room in their home to grow.
If you have plans to move your partner in with you or have dreamed of setting up a home office for a business, you intend to start in the next year or so. Consider whether the homes you visit have the means to support your aspirations.
Otherwise, in a few years, or even a few months, you’ll need to begin the house-hunting process all over again.
Find The Perfect Home: New Build Or Old Home
There are pros and cons to both new builds and older homes. At the same time, older houses tend to provide you with square footage for your money. More modern homes allow you to move in and start living straight away because you don’t need to spend time and money renovating the property.
Which style of home will appeal to you depends on your means and lifestyle. Suppose you’re too busy and low on cash to spend money fixing up an old victorian house. A new build, although smaller, maybe more fitting and sensible for your life.
The tips above are practical recommendations to ensure you choose a home that’s affordable, functional, and can adapt to fit any plans you have for the near future.