The first and most important question everyone should ask is what kind of housing do I need. What do I want? Like real estate itself, this question is complex and is made up of many sub-questions and components that must be asked and answered before beginning the search for a new home.
Real estate is a product like any other. Their purpose is to satisfy a certain need in a person, namely the need to live somewhere. But just like real estate, they have a lot of differences between them and people's needs are very different. Without clearly defined needs and an answer to the question of what do I want, choosing a real estate can be a very long process requiring too much effort, money and time. Whenever a client comes to me and asks what properties we offer, my first question is always "What do you need?".
Put your needs in perspective as well. What will you need in say the next 5 - 7 years. What plans do you have? More kids or a job promotion and more financial resources. Your new home should also meet your future needs.
The first thing to do is to make a list of the things you need and then rank them in order of importance and determine which ones you can compromise with and which ones are an absolute must for you. For example, one of the main issues is how many rooms to have in my new home. This is one issue that very few people would compromise on. Thus, the question is asked more correctly than how many square feet of living space I need, since square footage is a relative factor.
I did a survey of my friends on the social networking site Facebook asking them what is the first question you would ask when starting to look for a new home. As I suspected the questions were many and varied and at the end of this presentation I will sum them up into a list that I hope will help prepare you for the process of choosing a new home. The truth is that each one should be answered in advance based on your own needs and only when you are ready with the answers can you begin looking for your new home.
Trade-offs. Unfortunately when choosing a new home you will also have to make compromises with it. I have a colleague who told me about a client of his who refused to compromise with her choice of home, she had very strict criteria and didn't want to change any of them, as a result she looked for a new home for four years and kept looking. That is, she compromised on the time factor. Unfortunately there is no perfect solution, there is a perfect compromise. This is the solution with the fewest and most painless compromises. Make no mistake, you will have to compromise. The perfect home is just pure luck or a matter of a hell of a lot of money.
Personally, I think a person who has decided to buy a new home should settle for the best compromise in the shortest amount of time. Questions like "Let me wait to see if something better comes along" are redundant. There will always be something newer and better. The question should be "What is best for me right now".
