 Maybe you need a guest room, an open concept kitchen to entertain, or a huge master closet. Maybe you want a fenced-in yard for your pup, a garage for your tools, or a neighborhood with a view. There are all kinds of things to consider when looking to purchase a home. Because we purchased our home in a very competitive/low inventory market, Lucas and I wanted to be ready to strike by listing out our needs/wants checklist. If a home met the criteria we had preset, then it was the greenlight to put in an offer. If it didn’t meet some of the criteria we were looking for, we were ready to continue looking. That said, our House Hunting Checklist may differ from what your “needs” and “wants” in a home, so we’re sharing our step-by-step guide to help you find your dream home! If you haven’t checked out my latest blog posts sharing about our home-buying journey in New England, I’ll have the links listed below. This entry is Part 3: Our House Hunting Checklist: How to Find Your Dream Home, stay tuned for: Part 1: We’re Homeowners Part 2: How to Find the Perfect Realtor Part 3: Our House Hunting Checklist: How to Find Your Dream Home Part 4: Putting in an Offer for Our First House! Part 5: Offer Accepted! Now We Wait... Part 6: HOME TOUR: We Bought Our First House in New England Step #1: Connect With the Right Team Before we dive into how many bedrooms and bathrooms you need, first things first on the House Hunting Checklist… Find the right team to help you along, which includes 1) Connect with a lender to get preapproved and 2) Connect with a realtor to help you get started. Take the time to interview realtors, and you may even shop around for a good interest rate with the right lender. Whomever you decide to move forward with, make sure you communicate your goals and allow them to help set expectations as well. Once the foundation is set, you’re ready to start looking at houses! Step #2: Determine Your Deal-Breakers Was our dream home even out there during a low inventory market? This was the question we repeatedly asked ourselves as we began to comb through house listings. We knew going into the homebuying process that a house meeting ALL of our criteria may not exist in today’s market, so knowing the difference between our “wants” and “needs” was absolutely critical in determining our House Hunting Checklist. Your “Needs” will be your absolute “must-haves” or even “deal-breakers,” while your “Wants” are more like “It would be nice if…” Need/Want #1: For example, on our checklist, we “needed” 2 bedrooms minimum. 1 bedroom would be ours and the other can either act as my home office or guest room. With that said, we also “wanted” 3 bedrooms if possible, so that way we don’t have to dismantle my home office every time we have guests. Need/Want #2: Another “need” for us was space surrounding the home. We hoped to have neighbors nearby, but not neighbors close enough to high-five outside the window. A “want” for us was a fenced-in backyard. We didn’t mind putting up a fence ourselves if the house didn’t have one already, but it would be nice if it was already existing! Need/Want #3: The last “need” that I’ll share from our personal checklist is a less than 30-minute commute time for Lucas to get to work Monday-Friday. Because I’ll be working from home, I didn’t have any preference on which neighborhood to live in based on commute. But that said, we “wanted” a suburban neighborhood (away from the city) and nearby grocery stores. Step #3: Attend Open Houses Once you have a good idea on what you “need” and “want,” we HIGHLY recommend attending a handful of open houses. Not just one or two… but a handful. Lucas and I thought we had an idea on what we wanted and needed, until we went to some open houses. (You’ll likely make some adjustments to your House Hunting Checklist as you attend different open houses, but it’s good to start with a foundation!) How Does the House Feel? Selecting a preferred neighborhood, square footage range, or number of rooms “on paper” is one thing, but getting a feel for a house layout in-person is a whole other experience. Start by asking yourself the obvious questions like, “do you like the appearance of the home?” If not, “are you okay with making the cosmetic updates?” Does this Layout Fit Our Lifestyle? But also ask yourself questions like, “Is this enough storage space for our lifestyle?” Like I mentioned in my last blog post, the first open house we attended barely had any storage space, and the military lifestyle doesn’t really allow us to be minimalists even if we wanted to. How’s the Neighborhood? Also take in the surroundings, “Can you picture yourself going for a run in the neighborhood? Why or why not?” or “How much light does each room get?” Pictures are great, but open houses can really reveal “needs and wants” that you have for a home, that maybe you didn’t even consider until attending an open house. Step #4: Be Ready to Strike It’s so important to have a list of “needs and wants” ready prior to an open house, especially in today’s competitive housing market. Potential homebuyers are submitting offers within 24-48 hours of open houses, so you want to make sure you come prepared with intentional thoughts and thorough questions for the selling agent, so that way, you can be fully ready to strike. Step #5: Sleep On It Although preparation and being ready to strike when the right house comes along is important, I highly recommend still trying your best to not become too overly excited. It’s really easy to be excited over the first house you see… but make sure to thoroughly think each house over, or maybe even “sleep on it” before deciding to make an offer and putting down your earnest money. It’s really easy to get stuck on the thought of, “Is our dream home even out there during a low inventory market?” But please know that even in a low inventory housing market, there will always be more houses. You just may have to alter your idea on “dream home” and really evaluate the differences between your “needs” and “wants.” Also, as long as you’re not in a drastic hurry to move into a home, take the time you need to weigh out your options. And for now, that’s a wrap! These are the 5 steps we “checked-off” as we searched for our first home in New England! I could’ve listed all of our “needs and wants” in this blog post, but since every homebuyer has different preferences, we hope that sharing these steps was much more helpful as you find your dream home!
Have you determined your “needs” from your “wants”? Let me know! ‘Til Part 4, Gen
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You can find our House Hunting series on YouTube!  Should you interview more than one realtor? How do you even find the perfect fit? What factors do you need to consider when building your house hunting team?
There is no “One Size Fits All” realtor, so it’s really important to think about who you want to work with when looking for your first home. You really want to find someone who is not only knowledgeable and communicative, but who also has your best interests in mind. And if you don’t find the right fit the first time? It’s okay to look elsewhere… that’s what we did at least and trust me when I say that taking the time to find the right fit, is 1000% worth it! If you haven’t checked out my latest blog post kicking off our home-buying journey in New England, I’ll have it linked below. This entry is Part 2: How to Find the Perfect Realtor, stay tuned for: Part 1: We’re Homeowners Part 2: How to Find the Perfect Realtor Part 3: Our House Hunting Checklist: How to Find Your Dream Home Part 4: Putting in an Offer for Our First House! Part 5: Offer Accepted! Now We Wait... Part 6: HOME TOUR: We Bought Our First House in New England You can find our House Hunting series on YouTube!  Can you believe it!? The Swanson’s are First-Time Homeowners!
We are jumping into this next chapter with our hearts 1000% all-in, and we’re feeling so very blessed to have found our perfect fit during this year’s insanely competitive housing market. To hear about our experience buying our very first home in New England, keep on reading! This entry is Part 1: We’re Homeowners, stay tuned for: Part 1: We're Homeowners! Part 2: How to Find the Perfect Realtor Part 3: Our House Hunting Checklist: How to Find Your Dream Home Part 4: Putting in an Offer for Our First House! Part 5: Did Our First Offer Get Accepted? We Have a Problem... Part 6: EMPTY HOUSE TOUR: We Bought Our First House in New England! I’ll try my best to walk you through the steps that we took during our first homebuying experience! And although there are so many different factors that can go into the homebuying adventure… finances, location, timing... and I’d also like to repeat the fact that this is our first time buying a home (we’re NOT experts), we hope that this blog/video series may be helpful to anyone interested in purchasing a home soon!  Growth is growth - no matter how small and even during seasons of waiting.
It’s no secret that the past year has brought its fair share of setbacks. Canceled vacations, postponed events, rescheduled plans, physical and social distance between loved ones… living in a pandemic can really weigh you down on some days. With that said, I have learned that when life is pulling you back or “slowing” you down, it’ll likely launch you into something incredible. Life is about to get really exciting for us, and we can’t wait to share more on what’s next! But until it’s the perfect time to share, I wanted to take a moment to reflect on the importance of: Seasons of Waiting.  Although hiking in the snow and rain can be its own unique experience, there’s nothing like PNW hiking in the summer! Now that spring is here and summer is right around the corner, I’m already creating hiking plans for when I’m back in WA for June. Because let’s face it… growing up in the Pacific Northwest has SPOILED me rotten when it comes to my hiking expectations. Sorry New England... we love you, but the PNW trails just hit differently!
As of April 6, 2021, Here are my Top 10 Favorite Hikes in Washington State and 10 PNW Trails on my Hiking Bucket List!  I don’t want to be the bearer of bad news… but I have to admit that it’s utterly impossible to explore the entirety of Boston all in one day. That said, the good news is that you can fit in a ton of Boston charm into one full day, because of how walkable the city is!
Maybe you have a Sunday free to drive to downtown, or maybe you’re on a New England road trip and can only spare 12-24 hours in America’s Walking City - based on places we've experienced for ourselves, here’s what I recommend you see and do while you’re visiting Boston, MA for a day! The effects of COVID-19 in 2020 pushed many comfort zones worldwide. And for those in the office space, the line drawn between work and home was intensely blended.
About 1 year ago, my team was sent home to “temporarily” work remote. I remember having an impromptu Town Hall meeting at the office, where our CEO shared that many of us were to start working from home for an uncertain amount of time, starting that same day. My team walked away from that meeting, packed up our desks, laptops, and office materials, and drove home thinking that this would last a couple of weeks or maybe a couple of months. I would have never predicted that I’d still be working from home a year later, and indefinitely for the unforeseeable future. In September 2020, my husband and I relocated to Boston due to military orders. My “temporary” remote position thus became a “permanent” remote position. While I still count my blessings on the fact that my company was willing to be flexible and keep me on the team (even when 3500 miles away), shifting the mindset of “We’ll be back in the office soon!” to, “I have to create an office at home…?” was a bigger leap for me. Creating space for work where you live has its ups and downs. Now that I have 1 year of working from home under my belt, I wanted to share 5 Tips On How To Efficiently Work From Home that are working for me thus far. Hopefully you'll find them helpful too!  We created the ULTIMATE New England Bucket List! Here’s a list of 50 things we want to see and do before our military contract in the Northeast comes to a close. Let us know if we have any Bucket List activities in common, if you’ve crossed any off of your list already, or if you have additional suggestions!
So far, we've completed 21 out of 50 (42% complete!). Connecticut Maine Massachusetts New Hampshire Rhode Island Vermont Non-State Specific *Disclaimer: Since we're based in Massachusetts, it's a little more MA-focused!*  Since moving to New England, we realized very quickly that there are so many destinations within a short drive from Boston, making the weekend day trip options endless! Even in the winter, on a day with a chill in the air but sunshine still shining, Newport, RI is the perfect ocean escape. While there is plenty to do in and near Newport where you can easily fill up an entire week, here’s how you can spend a day in Newport, Rhode Island in the winter time:
You can find my Vlog on YouTube!  It has officially been 6 months since Lucas and I moved to the other side of the country. Where has the time literally gone?
Although we still have many more months (ahem... years) remaining here in New England, we have already learned a thing or two during our first PCS Moving experience. I’ve had a few friends reach out asking about how we’re settling in now that it’s been 6 months so I decided to write it all out. To those of you reading, who happen to also have had experiences moving to new homes, please let me know if you can relate to some of the lessons we learned! |
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