This is part 1 of our 8 part How To Buy A Home Without A Realtor series. Part 1 is to guide you through the home search process without a realtor. This guide is designed to find typical home for the purpose of living in it by the owner.
Home buying used to be very difficult before the internet. Homes are listed on the local MLS, and that information is shared with only other brokers. Buyers had to go to the broker’s office and look at available homes in a little booklet, schedule tours, and hopefully that home isn’t already taken.
People used to list home on newspaper’s classified ads section, that’s another way homes were advertised.
But the internet made sharing listings between MLS easier. Then companies like Zillow started building a product that’s consumer focused. Clean interface, up to date information on homes in all areas. Which is why people don’t go into broker’s office to look at listings anymore. They are all online.
This made home searching much, much easier. So finding a home without a realtor also became much easier.
But there are still value in having a buyer’s agent if you have requirements that’s more than the standard request. For example, if you want to buy a home that can be rented out for Airbnb, or if you plan to do long term rentals, having a real estate agent will help you find homes that fit those special conditions more efficiently, since not all of those information is available online.
I recommend using platforms like YouTube and Google to search for information about neighborhoods. A lot of real estate agents have an online presence, and one of the ways they generate business is creating video tours of an neighborhood. They are usually very informative and gives you a good start to learning about a neighborhood.
Google also helps finding top articles on a neighborhood. But most of the articles I’ve read is outdated from 5 years ago and they just recycle over and over without adding new information to them. So this is less informative than the videos.
I personally would also use Google Maps to find areas that’s close to work, cool restaurants, and schools that I want my children go to, if I had any children 🙂
This is also where I would use Zillow and start looking at the area to understand how the schools are in each of the potential areas I care about.
This is also where limitations of platforms like Zillow start to show. If I wanted to find homes that are zoned to a particular high school, it’s currently not possible. But the MLS has that feature.
Now that we narrowed down the neighborhoods, we can start finding the right home.
Zillow, Redfin, and other major consumer facing websites have great toolsets on homes but it has its limitations. Uploaded documents such has Seller Disclosure Notices, and pre-inspection reports, and other documents that are uploaded to the MLS isn’t really accessible on these consumer facing websites.
The only way that I know how to get access to the documents is via either MLS, or asking the listing agent for those documents. And depending on the listing agent, you might not receive anything even if you text and email them unless you are under contract. So be wary of this.
When finding the right home, everyone has different requirements. But feel free to use the following framework when selecting your perfect home.
Have you seen that meme about picking two out of the three when going through college? It’s the same concept here.
Price is a pretty hard limit. How much can you afford for a home. If you are financing with a mortgage, that then includes the mortgage payments. Feel free to checkout our mortgage calculator if you are looking to get an understanding on how much you can afford.
Some expenses that people don’t think enough are maintenance expense for things that go wrong. New AC replacement, mowing the lawn, fixing the roof, etc.
Property taxes and insurance are also expenses that need to be calculated when finding a good price home.
Location is another thing to consider. This includes what area do you want to live in. What are the local amenities. What school district is the home zone to. How close is it to your office.
There’s a reason people say “location” three times when they talk about real estate, because it’s way harder to change a location and its surrounding area than it is to change what the home looks like. Which brings us to our next point – the home.
Home is the last piece to consider when making the trade off. This doesn’t just mean what the home looks like, does it have high vault ceiling and large picture windows bringing in natural lights. This also mean the type of home. If you want a good location, and a good price, the home available might not be a single family home with a big yard, it might mean a studio size condo.
The age of the home, whether it’s a move-in ready home or a fixer-upper, is it a condo with high HOA cost or a townhome that has a lot of amenities, these all add to the trade-off equation.
After finding your home online, it’s time to find ways to tour a home without a realtor. Read part 2 of the How to Buy A Home Without A Realtor series. And if you want to know tour a home with just your phone, check out our DIY Unlock.
