How do you find a home when there are no homes available??
We understand… its frustrating to be preapproved and ready to buy a home but you can’t find anything that you’d like to buy. We like to give our Homebuying 101 students extra tips to help along the way so here are 5 ways we help you find a home when there seem to be no homes available!
5 Creative Ways to Find a House
1. Go Treasure Hunting!
You know where you’d like to live, so go walk, drive, or bike the areas you like and give us (or your agent) the addresses of homes you would like to live in. We’re talking about homes Not on the market. We can contact those homeowners and see if they’d like to sell their home- we have definitely had success with this several times.
2. Letter Campaigns (Our Most Successful Method!)
Once we have all the specifics of what you’d like in a home and a very well defined area, we can get addresses for all the homes in that area that fit your criteria. We then send a personalized letter to them with a nice bio about you and how wonderful you are! Then we ask them if they (or a neighbor) has been thinking of selling. Another good tactic that has gotten 3 of our buyers’ homes in the past year.
3. Ask Around
You’d be surprised how many people you know who might be wanting to ‘move up’ from their home into something larger and you could be the solution! Don’t be shy, ask around at work or your friends. We can help you negotiate and navigate the sale once you’ve found a home you might be interested in buying.
4. Enter the Expired Zone
When a home doesn’t sell, the listing ‘expires’ and is still in our database of homes for sale. We can search for homes that didn’t sell over the last 18-24 months (when the market was slower) and talk to those sellers to see if they really would like to sell.
4. Garage Sale Gold
When you are out and about in neighborhoods you like, stop in at garage sales and let us know if you like the home! A garage sale or especially an estate sale is often what happens before someone puts their home on the market so we can contact the owner and beat the crowd!
What do you think- are you ready to try a few of these creative ways to find your dream home? Give us a call or email if we can help!