Beginning Your Home Search

Learn how to survey the housing market, locate promising homes for sale, and decide what you really want in a house.

It's a good idea to start your home-search process on your own, particularly if you haven't yet chosen an agent. Just going to open houses for a week or two or surfing the Internet will help you get a sense of the local market. It can also refine your sense of how much house you can afford, potentially expand your horizons regarding livable neighborhoods, and wise you up to what all the advertising hype really means -- or disguises.

One of the first things you must do when you're beginning a home search is to choose the area where you want to live -- or at least narrow it down. For help learning about unfamiliar neighborhoods. Once you've settled on your preferred neighborhoods, you can start your search.

Somewhere out there is a seller who wants to sell his or her home as badly as you want to buy one. This means you can count on homes being advertised in at least a few places.