Starting Your Home Search

A home's price shouldn't be the only factor in your search. Also consider the location and quality of the property.

Buying a piece of real estate is different than buying a home. The former requires getting the legal and financial parts right, while the latter means finding a property that you'll be happy living in. Here are some tips to help ensure that your next house is a place you'll want to stay for years to come:

It can't be overstated: Focus on the location and general quality of the property. Don't go chasing an exact price or a particular feature, be it a deck, a high-efficiency furnace or a finished basement. Price can be worked out in negotiation with the seller (given the right general ballpark), and a good-quality home in a good location can be tailored to your specific needs later.

Start by making a list of your needs and wants. List your dislikes, too.

This will help you zero in on a neighborhood and, together with your price range, will help your agent narrow the field of prospective properties.

If you can't afford what you want where you want it, sacrifice something inside the house rather than sacrificing the location. You can add a second bathroom or install hardwood floors to bring a house up to your standards, but you can't improve the neighborhood single-handedly.

Most buyers begin their shopping online. That's a useful and gas-saving way to familiarize yourself with your market. But remember, photographs and virtual tours can overstate a property's good points and understate its deficiencies. You might also unwittingly dismiss some really great prospects. To get real-world input review, review any listings of interest with your real estate agent.

It's smart to start looking at homes near the bottom of your price range so that you'll have room to bid higher. Also, if you start high and decide you can't or won't want to spend that much, you may end up disappointed because nothing at the lower end is appealing.

Make several visits to any house you're seriously considering. If things are so frenzied that you're likely to lose out if you follow that route, get the most out of every minute you're in the house. Consider yourself a reporter and detective, there to gather as much information as possible about the house and the sellers. Don't forget to take a notepad, tape measure, camera and even binoculars.

At most open houses you will find an information sheet about the house. The most complete ones spell out such things as square footage of lot and house, room sizes, property taxes, average monthly utility bills, and the ages of appliances and major mechanical systems, as well as the number of bedrooms and baths, and other basic data.

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Starting Your Home Search