Finding a new home

A lot has changed in the way you look for a house in the last 7 years, or should I say the way we look for a house. When we bought our current home we used the books of 'homes for sale' in the front of grocery stores and the newspaper to find open houses. Driving around getting to know neighborhoods and looking at paper maps to determine where homes were located before going to open houses was quite a cumbersome process.

Today, though, many things have changed for us when it comes to finding a new home. First of all, this time we are working with a real estate agent to find homes in the areas we are looking. We chose to stay with the same realtor we used when we bought our current home which was nice since she already knew us. We told her about the areas of the city we were interested in and criteria for homes that we feel will fit our lifestyle, and she put the information into www.mibor.com to create a daily email feed with properties that fit our criteria. In addition to the information she gave us, we searched weekly online using the Remax and F.C. Tucker sites to see properties that were available.

Using the internet to search for a home had some advantageous and challenging aspects. It was great to have all of the available properties in the city at our fingertips. We could use a map function to find properties within blocks of our desired locations and compare them side-by-side. However, seeing all of the properties could be overwhelming and we became numb to all of the information after a while.

To make things harder, we weren't exactly sure where we wanted to be, rather we had a better idea of where we didn't want to be. Our searches were open to Zionsville, Carmel, Geist, Pike Township, Washington Township and Center Township. We wanted a single-family home, with at least 3 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Ideally it would have a finished basement or space for Sky to play his guitar, but we weren't beholden to that. In fact, we weren't really beholden to anything except a good place to hide the litter boxes! We wanted to be close to family and friends, near amenities like groceries and sporting facilities, but those wants could be met in many areas. As far as details in a home, we figured if we found a place in a great location that didn't have what we wanted, we could always do some remodeling to make it ours.

All of this has made for an interesting search. We've kept our agent busy as we've gone between thinking that we definitely want to be in Carmel with good schools, close to family and grocery to deciding that no, Carmel isn't for us, instead we want to be in the Fall Creek area in an older Arts and Crafts home. She has been very patient with us and has helped us narrow our focus. She has shown us almost any home we have sent her way, narrowing down our list to those she thinks we would be most interested in. Hearing her ideas and feedback has been valuable as we weigh all of the options.

It's only about a month and a half before we have to move, so we don't have a lot of time. I don't want to be too romantic about all of this, that really isn't my style! But, I figure with all of the homes we go through, we'll 'just know' when we've found the right one :)