First time home buyers often want to know how man homes they can look at in an afternoon or evening and how many homes they need to look at before they find the right home. The answer to both questions is it depends.
Last year I showed about 300 homes to buyers. Over the years I have developed a system. If I am showing buyers homes in the city we can usually see about three homes and hour. Buyers spend 15 to 20 minutes on average in each home, and we usually need time to travel from house to house. Generally it isn’t hard to look at 8 houses in an afternoon.
Most buyers start to get things mixed up after about 6 houses and most buyers have some kind of a limit and if we go beyond it they just stop absorbing information. Sometimes out of town buyers need to look at 25 homes on a weekend. It that case it is important to take notes.
Most home buyers need to look at ten or more homes in person before they can make an offer, and I have had several home buyers who needed to look at 30 to 50 homes. These days we don’t usually find 50 homes in a buyers price range in the area where they want to live and most buyers use the internet to screen out the homes that probably won’t work for them.
Buyers who shop in a few neighborhoods or a couple of cities have the hardest time finding a home which is why I encourage home buyers to start by choosing a neighborhood. Occasionally a buyer has a home style, price range and neighborhood combination that just don’t work. They may want a home that no more than ten years old but the want to live close to downtown. Sure there are a few but not many. Sometimes the price doesn’t go with the neighborhood which is why I encourage people to look at my Home Sales and Prices by Neighborhood reports.
That brings us right back to my answer “that depends”.
