{"id":79,"date":"2005-12-29T21:25:38","date_gmt":"2005-12-30T02:25:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/?p=79"},"modified":"2005-12-29T21:25:38","modified_gmt":"2005-12-30T02:25:38","slug":"home-search-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/2005\/12\/29\/home-search-i\/","title":{"rendered":"Home Search I"},"content":{"rendered":"

It begins…<\/p>\n

I have got back into the house search. Just before I got married I was looking, but I felt rushed and the market was going crazy. So I didn’t feel comfortable making a decision. Now I think the market is calming down and I won’t have to make difficult decisions with Jeni around to tell me how wrong I am ;-).<\/p>\n

Searching<\/h3>\n

Anyone who reads this and has advice feel free to chime in. Write now I have been scouting out the area I am interested in (Dr. Phillips). I have been using Yahoo! Real Estate<\/a> and Buy Owner<\/a>. So far the results seem failry good, I am interested however in finding a good mls search engine. Or somehwere I can enter MLS numbers in to lookup the property information.<\/p>\n

Validating<\/h3>\n

I have found it extremly helpful to use OCPA<\/a> which is the Orange County Property Appraiser’s website. Here you can put in an address and look up the buy\/sell history of the property. As well as look up properties around that area to see what the going rate of the neighbors houses are.<\/p>\n

A good example of where OCPA<\/a> shed some light on a house was a certain property that looks like it was bought 5 months ago, just to be resold now. This tells me either there is something wrong with the house, or it was a buy, repair, and sell job. So I can expect a bit of a premium if the second option is true.<\/p>\n

Pet Peeves<\/h3>\n<\/p>\n

My first peeve is no address. One of the most important things to me is locatoin, and half of the houses that get returned don’t have an address. This is no good because I can’t look up the informaiton on OCPA, and it means I have to call and talk to a realtor. I appreciate there effort in wanting to talk to me, however I would like to know some information about the property before I get into any kind of negotiation.<\/p>\n

My Second peeve, no pictures. This is more of a peeve with all classified type listings. PLEASE PUT PICTURES, I am only interested in text if the picture appeals to me. Or if I know exactly what I am looking for. In the case of a house looks are very important, so if it looks like crap, or the lawn looks shady, then I am not interested, if it looks well kemped there is a good chance I will give it a little more thought. So you might think oh my lawn sucks, I will leave out a picture. WRONG, I just will ignore you completely. Atleast with the bad lawn, I still consider price etc, and if the price is right, I will work on the lawn myself.<\/p>\n

Conclusion<\/h3>\n

So far, I am less stressed than I was last time I was looking. I think I have a better grasp on what is expected of me, and what cost are associated with the sale. As well as in a better financial situation so hopefully I will get something more appropriate for Jeni and my needs.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It begins… I have got back into the house search. Just before I got married I was looking, but I felt rushed and the market was going crazy. So I didn’t feel comfortable making a decision. Now I think the market is calming down and I won’t have to make difficult decisions with Jeni around […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-79","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-house"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=79"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/79\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=79"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=79"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/danielandjeni.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=79"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}