{"id":16268,"date":"2011-07-08T13:10:22","date_gmt":"2011-07-08T20:10:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/?p=16268"},"modified":"2012-02-24T23:24:37","modified_gmt":"2012-02-25T07:24:37","slug":"knife-catcher-the-tour-offer-tour-meat-grinder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/seattlebubble.com\/blog\/2011\/07\/08\/knife-catcher-the-tour-offer-tour-meat-grinder\/","title":{"rendered":"Knife-Catcher: The Tour, Offer, Tour Meat Grinder"},"content":{"rendered":"

[Note: This is part of an ongoing series<\/a> on Tim’s personal homebuying experience.]<\/em><\/p>\n

I thought I would continue the Knife-Catcher series by focusing a little more on our specific home selection process. Here are the basic steps we went through when looking for a home:<\/p>\n

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  1. Look at listings online.<\/li>\n
  2. Narrow list, tour homes.<\/li>\n
  3. Either:\n
      \n
    • Eliminated all toured homes, back to step 1.<\/li>\n
    • Re-tour homes of interest, make an offer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n
    • Get offer response, make counter-offer, etc.<\/li>\n
    • Conclude offer process, back to step 1.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Once we had narrowed down which neighborhoods<\/a> we wanted to focus our home search on, we basically started scouring every home on the market up to about 20% above our maximum target price (accounting for low-balling a stale, overpriced listing).<\/p>\n

      As we browsed homes online and decided which ones to tour, we used a shorter version of the criteria that was described in the neighborhood post<\/a>. Basically, we were looking for homes that had at least 1,000 square feet, two bedrooms, a 5,000 square foot lot, off-street parking for two cars, and a usable basement. If a home lacked one or two of the items on the list, we might still tour it if it was cheap enough.<\/p>\n

      We had no lower price limit, and even toured one home that was listed at $84,900<\/a> (that one basically needed to be completely gutted—among other issues, the overpowering stench of cigarette smoke permeated the whole home). All told, we toured over two dozen homes, spread across seven or eight outings.<\/p>\n

      Most of the homes we toured were eliminated from consideration almost as soon as we stepped in the door. Those that made it past the first cut usually merited a second tour, then an offer. During the second tour we would usually shoot a walkthrough video to share privately on YouTube with our close friends and family. Here’s a compilation of the opening shots from those videos on the five homes we made offers on:<\/p>\n