If you own your own home - did you find it via a listing online, directly through your realtor, or some other way? If through a realtor did you look at the home before it went on the market/was listed online?
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redfin.com. DH and I had both seen it online, but discounted it because it seemed so outdated in photos.
It IS outdated, but the actual layout of it and the neighborhood it's in won us over once we god desperate enough to see it (really probably only a week after we first saw it. We were on a tight deadline)
We saw it within the first week it was on the market and got an offer in pretty early. I think we only competed with a couple other bids.
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We found ours on Redfin too (actually, we found our realtor on there as well!)
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Aggressively pursuing the builder when it didn't even have walls and buying it before it ever hit the market. Our neighborhood requires being really forward to get what you want.
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@psw27:
smart! Do you know if the other side of your building has sold yet? We lucked into ours. We were renting from the owner (found the rental on Craigslist) and the owner decided to sell and offered us a fair deal if we were interested. Looked around briefly to make sure it was a good deal and bought it.
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@Foodnerd81: Oh yeah, it sold within days of us buying it! We were up against 2 other buyers, in addition to them. SO glad that stress is over. Of course, we moved in 4 months late due to construction delays...
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We used a realtor but we're very vocal usually finding houses ourselves and telling our realtor which ones we wanted to see.
Our realtor was sub par in terms of presenting houses we did not already know about...
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Redfin!
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realtor - we moved from VA to PA and didn't know the area at all - relied on them 100% to find us a home
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Our realtor found our house and we saw it before it was listed. It was being listed by someone else in her agency. I think we made an offer over asking before it was listed. We ended up competing with 10 other offers that came in the day of open house.
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Redfin. I discounted it when I first saw it thinking it was too far from work. It was super outdated but that's kind of what we were looking for!
Somehow I ended up looking at it again online and then I sort of became obsessed with it while we waited 'til the weekend to see the open house. We put down an offer right after looking at it at the open house. It's definitely not perfect but no regrets so far!
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Trulia.com! We set up a search with our parameters and would get emails when new listings popped up. We ended up using the sellers realtor at signing because we liked him and we split the fees. The seller took the difference off the asking price.
There's an app and DH and I were obsessively looking. DH actually found the listing.
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Redfin. We were using a buyer's agent when we first started looking and he was beyond useless (he actually cost us a house that we would have bid higher on because he convinced us that it wouldn't go for above asking). We quickly realized that Redfin's model (where you are responsible for doing most of the searching) worked better for us.
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Wow, lots of Redfin users! They don't list in our area yet
so we've been using Trulia and Realtor.com. @Mrs D: That's my worry! I feel like I have a good idea of what's out there, so I'm hoping we can find someone who can get us the inside scoop before the good stuff is listed.
@Corduroy: Wow - 10 offers!
@regberadaisy: We're super obsessive about looking, too! Even though we're not actively looking until late summer I like to know what's out there. It's hard to not get my heart set on some houses that I know will be gone by then.
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We were looking for a house near my parents. Since it's the same neighborhood, we drove past it and then put in an offer.
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I relied on using Red Fin. We'd search for homes and send them to our agents to schedule viewings.
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We used a real estate agent.
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We used Realtor.com to go through a bunch of listings. Finally got a realtor and saw another house we liked in the neighborhood. It was short sale and we put an offer on it but got outbid. When that happened, we said we loved the location (location to town and the neighborhood) and we went a street over and bought the only other house that was for sale.
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I stalked my local MLS listing service every single day for 2+ years until I found what we were looking for. (We looked at many, many homes in that time!). Our realtor also sent us weekly emails, but I felt like only *I* really knew what I wanted, etc. so I kept on stalking.
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Drunk Trulia.com searching at 2am.
It had been on the market for over 6 months and horribly overpriced. The price dropped the next morning, and our realtor, who I had emailed at 2am, called us at 9am to go to an open house that started at 10am. Our hangovers magically disappeared when we saw how great the house was for us!
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I found it online...probably Redfin or Zillow. I called our realtor and we went to look at the house before they even had an open house. We put an offer in the same day!
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We found ours through Zillow.
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Through our realtor. We had been looking for a while and he knew exactly what we wanted. Anytime anything close came on the market, he'd send us an instant email and we'd usually visit the property the same day it came on the market. The types of houses we were interested in generally were going under contract within a day or two so without him we would have missed out.
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@Rocker2014: lol, it's almost like drunk-buying stuff on Amazon at 2am, but way better!
@yoursilverlining: Wow, that's a long time! I can be super picky so I have a feeling I'll be the same way about not fully trusting our realtor to know our wants/needs.
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I found ours online but we had a realtor as well. Our market is crazy so I was super on top of it. I viewed it the morning it listed and we had an offer in by that evening. They waited until the open house that weekend before accepting any offers and we were in competition with one other one. I wrote a letter to the sellers because we both had a boston terrier so that won them over. Thank goodness because it was the 4th home we were making an offer on and I was about to give up!
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We were looking to build homes, but nothing seemed like the right fit for us. Our realtor asked us if we wanted to look at the builder next door and we said no. (We looked at them months ago, but it was out of our price range at the time) My husband called one day and we were surprised to find the house in our price range that someone backed out on. We rushed over and checked it out. It had everything we wanted. It was an inventory home, but since they hadn't started construction we were able to pick everything out (except the lot and floor plan). We got in at the right time because the prices went up drastically after we signed the contract.
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Stalked the Builder's website over and over until they listed a house in our price range. Besides that, we mostly used Redfin (and used Redfin as our realtor).
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Mls.ca
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We found ours on realtor.com
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Through our realtor. We initially passed on it because it wasn't in our desired developmemt. When the homes in our first choice development we wanted kept getting snatched up we decided to finally look at the house. As soon as I walked in I knew it was home.
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While we did find a bunch of houses through Zillow the one we bought our realtor found instead.
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We used a realtor.
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Redfin!
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We used a realtor. We got daily emails with new listings in our search area.
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We were looking at the house across the street with our realtor when we saw the selling agent put out a sign.
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Realtor.com and set up showings with an agent a friend in the area we were moving to had used. The house we wound up buying, the realtor did find for us. She called a friend who has a bunch of listings and gave her our parameters and asked if she had anything with those specs. Well, it turned out she did but we hadn't looked at the house because it was $30,000 over our budget and had no photos on the listing. We wound up getting it for $ 25,000 less than the asking price.
Our original realtor mostly works in County B and we were looking in neighboring County A, which is the primary focus of the other realtor.
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@autumnlove: @FancyGem: @Portboston: Stories like your guys' are so fun and make me have hope that we will find the perfect house! Seems like fate that you found the house for you
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Redfin for searching - we didn't use their realtor. We wanted a specific floorplan in a specific established neighborhood and just scanned Redfin to see if a house in that floorplan popped up. I saw our house just as it hit the MLS listing late on a Thursday night and knew from the photos it was the floorplan we wanted. I went to see it at the open house on Saturday and thought it was a good fit, so I had the realtor pop the lock on Sunday so DH could see it, and we put in an offer the next day or two. We said it was the easiest money our realtor made all year.
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We found ours through our realtor. It had been on the market for 18+ months! We bought it for waaaaay under what they were asking lol
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Through our realtor. He got the scoop that it was going on the market and was able to show it to us before it was even listed. The neighborhood is one of the best in our town and if we hadn't had our realtor, we wouldn't have seen it in time. The next day when it was listed we put an offer in and there were two other buyers doing the same. Luckily, ours was strongest so we got it.
smart! Do you know if the other side of your building has sold yet? 
so we've been using Trulia and Realtor.com. 
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