Home Builder Austin

As someone buying a home, how do you prefer to look for houses for sale?

Do you look on websites like realtor.com or do you rely on an agent to show you houses based on your requirements or do you drive around looking at for sale signs in neighborhoods you'd like to live in? Or do you attend Open Houses only. I'm just curious.

Public Comments

1. Most home buyers prefer online search to prepare a short list of areas they prefer or select to visit before contacting agents.
2. Craigslist. Real estate agents are evil.
3. I am in the process now and i am searching online www.realtor.com is a good one.
4. Drive byes in the neighborhood I want to live in. They approach the owner directly.
5. I have done this several times. First of all I select an area of the city that I want to reside in. I check the crime rate by calling the local police. Once that has been completed and I have decided on an area to reside in, I check and see if I can afford this area. If I can afford the area I then find out if there are or were built the number of bedrooms I require. Since I might find a FSBO I then drive through this area to see if there are any house I might be interested in just looking from the outside. I am so looking how racial diversified the area is. I am not interested in an area that has a collection of all one race. How the area is kept, are the lawns mowed and in good condition. How many children are in the nieigborhood. Now I check and see if there are possible foreclosures in the area. If there are possible foreclosures in the area, I find them, make contact and see if there is a possible deal that can be struck. Like assuming an existing mortgage, with a low down payment or the seller taking back a mortgage note. I also contact any FSBO to see if I can make any deal with them. I look for the same as a foreclosure to see if I can assume, with a low down payment or a seller carry second. Before closing the transaction I normally select a Fri or Sat nite to sit in front or near the house to see if there is community noise or other undesirable things happening that would kep me from the purchase of the home. Now most buyers don't take the time to do this, but that is exactly why they wind up with places they later want to get rid of. The don't check for possible deals with the foreclosures and FSBO. They simply follow a real estate agent around that will not tell them the truth about a neighborhooh because the truth will cause the deal to fall through. I did this once, the real estate agent told me that I was buying in a nice and good nieghborhood. Well I sat in the neighborhood on a Sat nite and they had a shoot out across the street from where I wanted to buy. When I presented the real estate agent with this new found information, all I got was it was safe before. After checking the crime report from the city I found that there were 3 shooting in the last 2-3 months. Several drug related arrest within a 1-2 block area of the house. I learned that most real estate agents don't even work the area that they sell houses in and therefore are ignorant of the going on in the area in which you are buying.. So you have to take all the precautions necessary,because the real estate agent will tell you I don't have to disclose the information and will point it out to you in some contract you might have to sign. I very seldom look at the internet seeking to purchase a home because they might not simplify the area I am looking in to purchase. I hope this has been of some use to you, good luck. "FIGHT ON"