Starting a Successful Home Search
Sunday, July 8th, 2007 at 8:19 pm 
By Ryan BrownStarting to look for a new home can be a bit overwhelming. One of the most important steps in any search is to calibrate your expectations first. Without detailed and current knowledge of the market conditions, its very easy to have an unrealistic idea of market prices. I believe this is one of the most important functions of any agent helping you to find a home.
The best way to do this is to look at homes that have sold recently which meet your search criteria. Looking at what is currently for sale gives you some idea, however the actual sold price gives the most accurate insight into market prices.
For example, lets say you’re looking for a 3 bedroom, 2 bath home in Hyde Park. That’s a pretty clear set of criteria, so we could easily look at the sold data for 3/2’s in Hyde Park.
Unfortunately I can’t post sold data directly the web (MLS rules). Here is a map with basic data, the color indicates the prices (blue = high, red = low), which range from the high $200’s to the mid $600’s:
Hyde Park 3/2 Sold Map - 2007 YTD:
Of course we could also look at the number of active and pending listings, the average days on the market, the sale prices over time (for trending), etc. As you can see, I like to map everything out in Google Earth to get a geographical understanding of the data (I wrote a tool to plot it for me :)).
The bottom line: Do whatever it takes to gain an understanding of the market value for property meeting your criteria. Your Realtor should have access to this data, and you should use it.
As I said, this data gives buyers an excellent perspective on the market and accurate expectations of what they will be able to buy. Of course, this market knowledge is also critical for evaluating the asking price of a property and making an offer.
“Fortune favors the prepared mind.”
- Louis Pasteur
Make sure you are prepared for your home search by having a good understanding of market prices.
Contact me if you’d like to go over sales data meeting your criteria.
