Buying a Home

Thing No 1  

Buy the best neighborhood you can afford.

Your first step here is to figure out what city or neighborhood you want to live in. Remember the old saw about "location, location, location?” Well, its true. The cheapest house in a great neighborhood is a better investment than the most expensive house is a lower quality neighborhood.  For overall demographics and data on metropolitan areas, you can visit a city site like CNNMoney.com's annual Best Places to Live list. For more detailed neighborhood information, check out sites like Yahoo! Real Estate or NeighborhoodScout.com. Look for signs of economic vitality, low unemployment, good incomes and good schools, Buying in a “transitional” neighborhood, like growth stocks, is higher risk and potentially higher reward.

Thing No 2  

No child left behind.

Even if you don't have school-age children, pay special attention to districts with good schools (high teacher-student ratios and graduation rates are among the hallmarks), When it comes time to sell, you'll find that a strong school system is a major advantage in helping your home retain or gain value.  Check out greatschools.net There are a few “schools don’t matter – kids don’t matter” chi chi areas like TriBeca or the Hollywood Hills, but those are rare and we’ll go ahead and assume you aren’t Lindsay Lohan. You can also not worry too much about this if you are buying something that is not, and will never be, geared toward families like an urban loft.  Finally, You want to be careful about pimping out a one-bedroom condo in a neighborhood filled with four-bedroom houses.  It’s going to be hard to find a buyer for the condo who wants to live in a family neighborhood.

Thing No 3  

Think local.

Get an idea about the real estate market in the area. For example, if homes are selling close to, or even above, the asking price, that shows the area is desirable. Try Zillow.com or Homegain.com, which are free, or Dataquick.com, which is available only to paid subscribers, to check out recent home sales. Then, drill down to the zip code and even the neighborhood or street. This may reveal a different picture.  For example, the overall market could be up slightly, the neighborhood you are looking in could be up a lot, but the street could be down as it falls in a different school district, has noise from a freeway or another flaw. 

Thing No 4  

Baby it''s cold outside.

In family-friendly hoods – driven in large part by school year,  people often try not to uproot their kids in the middle of the year, so the market heats up in March and is cooling by September.  If you have the flexibility, consider doing your house hunt in the off-season -- meaning, generally, the colder months of the year. You'll have less competition and sellers may be more willing to negotiate.

Thing No 5  

The lay of the land Next, take your search to real estate sites like Realtor.com or Yahoo! Real Estate which let you search for property that matches your requirements. Your agent can sign you up to the MLSs so you receive daily email updates.  Yes, daily.  You don’t need him/her to screen them for you. Nobody knows the little Natalie Wood inside you like you. (Natalie Wood as in Miracle on 34th Street and her dream house not Natalie Wood as in lying dead at the bottom of a lake potentially whacked in the head with an oar by Robert Wagoner).

That said, everything is not disclosed in a listing and don''t forget that these listings are – in essence – ads written by the selling agent and are skewed to make every property sound as dreamy as possible.  Your agent should be an expert in the areas in which you are looking in and should be able to give you a quick “oh, that house has a 70s kitchen” or “you can see and smell the city dump from that street” kind of read.  (Unless of course the listing is brand new)