I have always envisioned building a life and creating memories with my husband and kiddos in a home where we can plant roots and call our own. I had the fortune of growing up in a home that my parents' owned, a home that was built and finished a few months before I was born. It's where I spent the first 20 years of my life, before going off to a province far, far away for my first work assignment. Home was my constant, no matter where I was assigned. Even my kiddos love staying over my parents' for long weekends and summer vacations. Every nook and cranny has a history, a story of evolution to keep up with the times. And I want the same experience for my young family. :-)
Embarking on the journey to become homeowners opened us to a deluge of HORROR stories experienced by friends during their home construction and renovation. Runaway contractors, overpriced-yet-below-standard materials, deliberate shortcuts in construction, and poor craftsmanship are just a few hazards homeowners may encounter when building a home. If you love watching HGTV like I do, you'd be as surprised as I was to know that our local PHL real estate and home construction industry isn't like what we see on the shows. I'm writing this series about our experience in acquiring and building our first home so others can benefit from the lessons we learned. ;-)
Here are my 7 house-hunting tips:
1. Identify Your Dream Location. There is no fee for setting goals, so don't be limited *yet* by the price tag of real estate in the area. Set a shortlist for cities you'd like to live in based on factors like family & relatives, accessibility, place of business or employment, quality of schools, community, church, supermarket, traffic, pollution, safety & security. Owning a home can be a short-term goal and owning THE Dream Home can be for the long-term. It took us 7 years to find a property we really love in our desired location!
2. Draw Up Your Wishlist. List down your requirements and preferences. Go into specifics such as the lot area, number of rooms, etc. Some prefer a condominium for proximity to their place of business with the smaller area requiring minimal maintenance yet providing access to hotel-like amenities and shared security, while some opt for turnkey townhouse properties. Or if you're looking for an adventure, take on a challenging fixer-upper to renovate! Our wishlist included outdoor space to enjoy and play in, enough rooms to accommodate families and friends, ensuite masters' bath & walk-in closet, a function hall and roofdeck so we can host family gatherings and sleepovers for my kids and their friends as they grow up. My hubby literally drew up the ideal floor plan for our dream home on a piece of paper and it always gives me goosebumps to share that his drawing is almost the exact layout of the home we acquired later on! Talk about the law of attraction!
3. Research Real Estate Prices. Information is at your fingertips! Fire up your search engines and look for properties for sale on buy & sell sites like OLX and Lamudi to get an idea of the real estate price in the areas you like. You can also check bank websites for foreclosed property listings. Take note of properties that catch your interest. Write down a quick description of the property: property type (e.g. condo, townhouse, house & lot), lot area, floor area, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and contact number. This is your working shortlist that will help validate and give perspective to the property values in your desired areas.
4. Set Viewing Schedules & Scout the Area. Get in touch with the owners/brokers of the properties in your shortlist and indicate the specific property you would like to view, together with your available schedule for viewing. Viewing or 'tripping' will give you an idea of how much your dream home will cost. And if you already have a budget in mind, you'll also know what properties you can afford in your desired locations. Remember to take pictures especially for properties you like! I also recommend that you share with your broker your desired areas and property criteria. We met one of the brokers when we were checking out a vacant lot. Because she had an idea of what we were looking for, when a private listing that matched our criteria came up 2 years after we first met, she informed us immediately and helped us close the sale.
5. Inquire About Association Dues & Other Surprise Costs. If you're looking at condominium, townhouse, or private subdivision properties, find out how much the association dues are. It can range from P100 to P25,000 monthly, if not more! These are dues you will pay for as long as you own the property for the use of shared amenities & security.
6. Summarize & Assess. Based on what's available in the market, assess the adequacy of your wishlist and also the sufficiency of you budget. This is the Give-Get analysis. For what you are willing to give/spend, what kind of properties will you get in your desired areas? Do you need to move further away from the heart of the metro to afford more land area? Or are you willing to downsize to a smaller property in your desired location? Dreaming up a home is free, but owning a home costs money. Our desired property didn't present itself to us for over 7 years of searching, thus we opted to rent until we found a home we really wanted. This decision freed us from the liability of a property that we didn't truly want for the long-term. Determine what your non-negotiables are and prepare for the next round of viewing.
7. Review, Refine, and Repeat. Continuously review and refine the criteria that you would like to add or remove from your must-haves. Some areas might not have listings today, but someday might, so revisit them from time to time. Get updates from your brokers. Nothing is constant, so keep on repeating the cycle, until you find your Dream Home. :-)
#DomesticGoddessMNL