Choosing the Right Home

Posted on by Charita H. Cadenhead

Where do you go from here?  For starters, what do you want in a home?  And where do you want to live?  These may seem like simple questions, but for some people, these are the 2 hardest questions that they’ll ever have to answer before the search begins.

What do You want in a Home?

Of course the number of bedrooms and bathrooms is the automatic answer (a superficial answer so to speak), so let’s dig a little deeper.  Beyond the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, what else is important to you?  For example:

  1. How do you feel about kitchens? Are you a good or if you are anything like me, you could care less whether a home had a kitchen in it.
  2. Are you willing to do a little work or would you prefer a home that is move in ready?
  3. If you are willing to do a little work, then define little for me (and for yourself as well).  Have you ever been in charge as a project manager? How good are you at planning projects? Do you have the time to manage the work or scheduling of such work?
  4. Does a one level home appeal to you?  How about a basement (full, finished, unfinished)?  How important to you is a basement or is it something that you can live without.
  5. Do you have kids and need a nice backyard for them to play in?  How do you feel about yard work and landscaping?  And let’s talk about the ability to maintain a yard (your personal physical attention and/or the financial resources to pay someone to do it.
  6. Some people wouldn’t want to live in anything other than a brick home.  How about you?  Do you have a preference:  full brick, brick front, siding, etc?  Or does it matter.

I won’t attempt to go through everything here, but you get the picture right?  There is a lot to consider and we have not even touched on the subject of what your community and neighborhood to be like.  How about school systems?  If you have school aged children, do you want to live in a particular school zone? What about your daily work commute.

This should be enough to think about just to get your brain to churning.  But let’s say the search has begun and you’ve found that house that has set your boat to sailing.  Now what?  This is where the art of negotiating and negotiating the deal comes in to play.