If You're Looking for a Home but Don't Know Which Yet

The decision to buy a new home can be influenced by many ups and downs in the real estate market, but there are many aspects worth considering when planning a home purchase. No matter what times we live in.

So what should you think about and pay attention to when you start seriously looking for a new home? This is explained in more detail by Signe Aarla, a real estate agent at Uus Maa Tartu office.

Time: sprint, marathon or hurdles

Think it through and try to set an approximate deadline by which you would like to move into your new home. It is important to understand that if you need a new home quickly, it may happen that there isn't exactly the kind of property offering you're looking for on the market and you'll need to make compromises. However, if there's no rush with the purchase, you don't have to settle for what's currently offered on the market, but can calmly search and wait until the "right one" comes on the market.

It's always worth being prepared for unexpected events that can turn your planned schedule upside down. If necessary, renting temporary accommodation can buy you extra time to overcome obstacles. In this case, you may need to postpone your final deadline, but it's still important to have a clear action plan and timeframe, as otherwise there's a risk of getting stuck searching.

Reasons and needs versus desires

A home purchase is not an ordinary real estate transaction, but an emotional decision. Regardless of whether you are driven to search for a new home by an urgent need or simply by a desire for something new, choosing a home is still a matter of intuition.

To more easily identify a suitable home for yourself, try to notice those qualities that are most important to you when describing your wishes – in other words, be honest with yourself and determine what is absolutely necessary in your new home and what perhaps isn't so important. What are you willing to give up if necessary? What is something you couldn't live without even for a day?

Type of home or life indoors and outdoors

The more precisely you can define what matters in your future home, the easier it will be to find a suitable one. Ask yourself whether the number of separate rooms, the layout of living spaces, or the amount of square meters is more important. Do you prefer a wooden or stone house, one or two stories?

It's also good to clarify right away whether home means only the interior spaces to you or must your future home necessarily include a small balcony, terrace, courtyard or even a whole fruit orchard. Is this a place where you can sit down with a friend for a moment and have coffee, or must it accommodate a greenhouse, a grilling house and children's play areas? The goal is to understand whether you should be looking for your new home among apartments, townhouses or detached houses.

Privacy or who and where your neighbors are

Try to place yourself on a scale where at one end there's a communal living arrangement with about twenty people and at the other end there's a single farmhouse in the middle of a forest, whose driveway is longer than the average city street. A good indicator for identifying your preferences can be recognizing whether you want to measure the distance to neighbors in meters or kilometers. Imagine you wake up in the morning in your new home and look out the bedroom window. What do you see?

Location or what is the foundation

It is often believed that the most important thing in real estate is the location. However, a home purchase is not just a single real estate transaction, but part of a bigger picture, part of your life. There is a very big difference whether you need to fit a new home painlessly into your current lifestyle or whether it can be a cornerstone around which you start to organize a completely different life.

In the first case, you need to find a suitable home in a clearly defined area, in the second case you can search for a pleasant home without geographical restrictions. Regarding location, it's also important to think through whether you prefer the conveniences of city life, the nature-closeness of rural life, or perhaps a combination of both.

Prerequisites or the fate of your existing home

Buying a new home inevitably brings a situation where your existing one becomes vacant. In the case of a rented home, this doesn't affect you, but finding a new tenant remains the responsibility of the rental property owner. However, if your existing home is your own, you need to do something about it.

The most common options are to sell your existing home or rent it out, depending on whether the money needed to buy a new home must come from the sale of the previous home or not. When timing the sale and purchase transactions, it helps if you have the option to move to temporary accommodation if needed. This means the sale doesn't necessarily have to happen before the purchase of the new home, but the reverse order of transactions is also possible. This gives you more options and so-called room to maneuver.

Borrowing capacity or what banks think of your plan

If you cannot use or if the proceeds from the sale of your previous home are not enough, it is possible to borrow the missing amount from a bank. However, it's worth finding out early on what conditions and how much a loan you can get. It's prudent to determine your borrowing capacity before you start searching for a home, so you avoid nurturing unfounded hopes. It's also worth familiarizing yourself with different banks' loan calculators and testing different loan periods and interest rates to get an idea of the approximate monthly loan repayment. This will help you set acceptable loan conditions for yourself.

Price range or be realistic

Using the previous two points, you can determine an appropriate price range. It's good to get clarity on what amount you plan to spend and what is the final price limit that you certainly cannot exceed.

If it happens that your price ceiling is still too low compared to your wishes, you need to make an important decision whether to make compromises on your desires or start looking for additional funds. When assessing your financial capacity, it's worth being realistic or even rather conservative, so that buying a home doesn't in any way jeopardize your daily living.

Utility costs or every homeowner's joys

It is very important to take into account the maintenance costs of your future home. Even if you plan to upgrade the heating system, replace windows or insulate the house, you should remember that these works take considerable time. Maintenance costs are of course directly dependent on your own habits, but to a certain extent, costs are inevitable.

It's often thought that maintaining your own house costs more than an apartment, but this doesn't always have to be the case. It's useful to find out before the purchase exactly how much maintaining your new home will actually cost you.

Completion time or new or old

If you compare homes to cars, then probably everyone would agree that the "year of manufacture" is quite important in both cases. There is a very big difference whether you buy something new and unused or property that has been in continuous use for decades. On the other hand, one could argue that quality is even more important than the year.

Well-maintained cars and homes are usually always valued. For example, historically authentic and skillfully restored homes can be more valuable than newly constructed buildings. Buildings of any age have their own peculiarities and possible problem areas, but also their own positive sides. So the question is: do you want a home that is genuinely new, or do you want a home that may be weathered, but has a rich history instead?

Condition or an unpolished diamond or a polished gem

Depending on the condition of the new home, additional investments may be needed beyond the purchase price. Therefore, before the purchase, you should again think about your needs and desires – do you want to move in right away or do you have the option to touch up your new home in places before moving in, or even do a major renovation?

So when choosing a home, it should be clear how much work, time and money you are willing to invest in the home immediately after the purchase.

The future or one year, two or twenty

This may sound like an odd suggestion, but when buying a home, in addition to your current life situation, it's worth considering possible future scenarios. A growing family, studies abroad or an idea to start your own home bakery – these are possible life changes that also bring changed expectations for your home.

If possible, it's worth taking these scenarios into account when choosing a new home right away, to avoid difficult situations later. Another option is to realize that this home is planned for a specific period of life and you're prepared to start looking for a new home again after a certain time.