Here's how we do it:

By now you should have determined your needs and utilized the "Home Affordability" calculator.  With that information in hand, it is important to consider the financing options available to begin the mortgage pre-approval process as soon as possible.  Being pre-approved for a loan makes your bargaining power higher when you eventually decide to make an offer on a property.  There are multitudes of properties currently on the market.  Using the criteria that we determined from the worksheets you've completed or from the discussion that we've had, we can narrow down the search tremendously.  

• We have access to virtually every property for sale in this market, and can show you homes that best match your requirements, including:
• All homes marketed by other Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices affiliates.
• All homes listed by other real estate brokerages through the Multiple Listing Service (MLS).
• Homes not necessarily on the open market yet.
• Many properties offered "For Sale by Owner"

We will schedule time to look at homes and neighborhoods, and will arrange showing appointments with the sellers or their brokers.  We can provide you information about the communities where homes are located, and can even give you a "report card" about the school district!  We will set up an e-mail notification to you through MLS of new properties that come on the market matching your criteria after the initial search.  If you should find any homes in the newspaper, magazine, on the internet, at an open house, driving by a For Sale sign or any other method, you should contact us for additional information regardless of who they are listed by.  We can save you time, hassle, and duplicated effort and probably give you more information than you can obtain yourself.  

After viewing homes and narrowing down the search, we can do a comparative market analysis to determine if the home(s) you are interested in is priced fairly in relation to the market trend. We will compare the property to similar properties sold recently, to similar properties currently active on the market, to similar properties that failed to sell, and to other relative statistics. This will help us to determine the price that you are willing to pay.

To help us during the search process, it is a good idea to evaluate the homes that we visit, and to continually assess your needs and buying criteria.  These criteria often change as you view more properties.