Many Choices

We met with a local realtor yesterday. We are very excited about our dream home search. We have so many choices. Our first group of listings that we received had about 40 different homes to look at. That was after inputing a fairly fine filter on our search.

This is such a contrast to the last time that we purchased a home five years ago. The only thing that we could afford was the home that we eventually bought. I suppose that was an easier decision back then. Do we want to buy or not? Now, we need to narrow down the listings to a manageable number, look at the properties, compare the properties, then make a decision.

What a difference it is to be the buyer in a buyer's market rather than the seller. We are lucky that our home in LA was 'only' on the market for about 2 months. Some of the homes we have been looking at here have been on the market for over 6 months. You can get a whole lot of house here for $275,000. We are looking at homes as high as $350,000. We just need to prioritize what is most important: school district, new home, finished basement, living area square footage, lot size, neighborhood, price, drive time to work, etc.

I took a look at the sales statistics for the area. The average sales price for existing homes in 2006 was $243k, up 5% from the previous year. That is a big difference from Los Angeles where the average was around $500k. We made that right decision to move (another affirmation).