Today, I wanted to go over the process of searching for homes in today’s seller’s market.

It happens every year when there’s a seller’s market that someone contacts me about a listing that sold a few days prior. It’s important to get linked up with a Realtor because a lot of the public home search sites are behind on their information.

The way that an MLS search differs from a Zillow or Realtor.com search is that, with a Realtor, the properties that have accepted offers can be weeded out. When you go to Zillow or similar sites, it will show you all the properties that are out there, but you can’t know whether the property is still for sale.

Another way that an agent can help is by analyzing the market for you. You, as a consumer, can get an idea of what houses are selling for in a certain area, but you won’t know what’s happening in terms of other factors specific to that neighborhood.

For example, I have a buyer that I’m working with now who recently got an accepted on a house about two weeks ago and their situation was a lot different; they had a house that they’d had an offer accepted on which had been on the market for a long time. The price had been about $20,000 too high. This is why it’s important to have an agent on your side when you’re looking for homes.

An agent can also quickly set up a showing. They can deal with scheduling appointments and get you to the house usually within 24 hours. In this market, you can’t afford to mess around.

Lastly, an agent knows how to draft an offer. If it’s a hot property, they’ll instruct you to make your offer more than asking price, build certain escalation clauses in so the price goes up, and various other tactics to make sure your offer stands out.

If you have any other questions about how to successfully search for homes in today’s market, just give me a call or send me an email. I would be happy to help you!