Deciding to buy a house is one thing. Actually finding one is another.
Finding a house can be difficult if you are picky.
I?m picky.
You wonder why I?m buying a house when all the home news is bad. Mortgage rates are up, home sales down, and everyone who was sure the market was going up is now sure it?s plummeting.
Never trust what “everyone” may tell you. There are tons of reasons to buy a house. You might need to relocate for jobs, school or family. You might need more space. Or you might want to be closer to “home.”
And when the news is bad, you get a buyer?s market.
To find the right house, you need to know where and what you want. It?s that “location, location, location” reality. Because I work near D.C. and have ties to Baltimore, I wanted to be in between. That narrowed it down to Anne Arundel and Howard counties.
Howard County is more central, but it?s a big county. Parts are pretty far away from, well, everything. I?m also familiar enough with Columbia to know I?m not the lab rat to continue the Jim Rouse experiment. That kept me out of old Columbia. (Is Columbia old enough to have an “old”?)
To get the type of house and location I wanted, I found myself already making compromises. Try as I might to avoid the clutches of the Columbia Association, I even considered homes under its control.
After some serious effort looking at commuting routes and neighborhoods, I narrowed my search to the area between Interstate 95 and Route 29. I drew a virtual box on a map and focused my house hunt in between Routes 216 and 175.
That took a ton of effort, and I hadn?t started really looking at houses. You?ll have to do the same before you begin.
I like traditional ? colonials, Victorians, anything where the garage isn?t the first thing you see. Columbia?s unusual architecture made my hunt more difficult. Limited funds made it more so.
But that information wasn?t enough. I typed up guidelines so I?d have a starting point for my Realtor. I think my guidelines were more ambitious than what most people might request ? no town houses, no busy streets and more. I had more than a dozen.
Those were mine. You need your own list. Want a big yard for the kids? Or a deck for parties? Then add those items. If house style matters, decide what works and what doesn?t.
But keep an open mind. A house style might not be exactly right, but everything else about the property might kick butt.
Now you need to find the right Realtor.
The right Realtor is like a good editor ? able to help you turn the word “picky” into the verb “pick” ? and make you a homeowner.
Dan Gainor is The Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow at the Media Research Center?s Business & Media Institute, a career journalist and media commentator. He can be reached at [email protected].
