When should I start house hunting? Home buyers want to make sure they have been approved for their home loan. Most people looking for a home to purchase give themselves a few months to shop around, sect...
Most people looking for a home to purchase give themselves a few months to shop around, sect a home, and get financing. Richard Fryer, a real estate school president with over 30 years of experience in the real estate field advises homebuyers to give themselves adequate time to put their affairs in order. "You want to make sure you allow yourself enough time to be approved; with the lending industry being able to approve loans much faster than they used to be able to. Loans can be closed a lot faster than they used to be able to because the underwriting doesn't take as long. So instead of thinking that once I find the right house it's going to take the 8-10 weeks, we can easily close most loans within 30 days...leave yourself 3-4 months and then you shouldn't be under pressure if you are in a market now," he says.
If you have children, you should also take into consideration whether you want to move into a different school district. If so, many parents may choose to start their home search at a time so that by move-in time, their children will not have to switch schools in the middle of the school year. Fryer goes on to say that "one wants to be thinking about a variety of issues, number one if you've got kids, do you want to pick them up and move them during the school year, which in many cases that answer is no. So that's why we see significant buying activity right near the end of the school year or right after the end of the school year, because people want to move and have their kids in place so at the beginning of the school year they will be where they want to be. You just need to look at all of the factors of what you are considering and the motivating factor for buying."
You also want to consider the market that you are thinking about buying in. If you are in an area that is experiencing a housing shortage or a hot demand for property, it will take much longer to buy a home. In this is the case, you will need to begin your search considerably earlier in order to have a place to live. "If you are in a market like Orlando, Florida, there are people who have been trying to buy a house for a year. And because of the lack of inventory, they may have been outbid on two or three houses. Now we are starting to see more inventory and that's probably going to level off in the next 3 or 4 months. Our inventory is slowly going up and if it continues to do so, then that problem will be alleviated somewhat. But we sold our house last summer and the people who bought our house had been outbid on two other houses and had been trying to buy a house for a year," Fryer explains.
