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So, you’ve decided to take advantage of the amazing market for home buyers in the greater Canton, Northville, Novi, Plymouth Michigan real estate market.

Good thinking! There are so many bargains to be had right now in this market right now.

Then the question becomes, “What can I do to find the home of my dreams faster, easier and with less hassle?”

Here are a few ideas we have for making that happen for you:

• Work with a professional agent who truly understands the market(s) in which you are interested, and who is completely dedicated to serving you properly (see more here).

• Search for homes on your own via the internet before you engage a real estate professional.  In addition to ProfessionalOne.com, another
  
  
  great website for this purpose is Realtor.com. (You can register for a free, no-obligation search on ProfessionalOne.com in the upper right corner of the homepage.)

• Use Google Earth to eliminate “bad location” homes (homes on busy streets, homes that back to busy streets, homes near the entrances to subdivisions, etc.). That old adage that the “three most important factors in choosing a home are location, location and location” is absolutely true. And never more so than now, when it is critical to make a good decision in order to maximize your opportunity for price appreciation when the market eventually corrects.

• Tour homes from the outside on your own before you view them with a Realtor.  Our experience shows that most buyers end up rejecting at least 50% of the homes “from the street” before they even get out of the car!  So, rather than throw away the time that you will invariably waste by feeling obligated to walk through a home because your agent set up the appointment and because the seller went to “all that trouble” to get their home ready for you, take a drive by on your own and eliminate these “street rejects” from the list you end up giving to your agent.

• Check relative pricing to help you prioritize the homes you want to see.  Give your agent a list of your top choices and ask him or her to to run a “quick CMA” for each of those properties (all of which can be done easily via email).  Using this approach, you can see which properties are the best ‘relative bargains,’ which should help you decide which homes to see first.  The better the value, the higher the priority.

• Meet with a lender BEFORE you start looking at homes (nothing is worse for a buyer than having to reduce their price range AFTER they’ve looked at a number of homes they later realize they can’t afford). Not only that, but the “rules of lending” keep changing and you simply MUST understand exactly the kind of loan(s) for which you qualify BEFORE you start looking in earnest.

We hope this information helps you in some small way.  Good luck, and happy househunting!