0: 100% Of our search and home buying process was done
virtually. I.
1: Saw all of them on FaceTime. We.
2: Looked at houses online and in person.
3: I didn't see it until the offer had been accepted.
I moved from Reno, Nevada, and my partner is moving from Los Angeles,
California, and we recently bought a townhome in Plano, Texas.
I took a new job that required me to relocate.
Between the cost of the flights being booked last minute,
the summer car rentals and the cost of the hotel,
it wasn't necessarily a wise thing to keep coming,
especially when we got here and many of the houses we wanted to see had already
gone under contract.
Our realtor was very understanding of our situation and that we couldn't always
be here in person,
so she kindly would go after work or after hours when there were not other
people visiting the house to try to do a FaceTime or zoom.
I was quoted around seven to 10 business days for my shipment to
come from Nevada.
It has now been four weeks and I still don't have furniture as you can see
behind me.
5: We moved from California to North Carolina because I got a job at Duke
University. I had to fly back to California for our wedding at the end of July.
It was actually the day that I was in the airport,
we had to FaceTime with our realtor and it ended up being the house that we got
accepted.
8: You do have to ask a lot more questions, like,
can you turn back to your left and show me this wall? Or what's in that closet,
if they skipped something that you really wanted to see.
5: I felt like this was a growing area. And if we had waited, you know,
another year, then the market might be a lot different.
1: There's a shipping container shortage right now,
and so we ended up having to use the U-Pack,
which offers these smaller cube containers.
2: We moved from Bountiful, Utah to Richmond, Virginia.
6: We were looking for a new adventure and we wanted to be closer to family.
2: We first had the idea that we could partially at least go through the process of
home buying virtually.
But at first we met with our real estate agent in-person in
Virginia to look at neighborhoods to kind of pick out where we wanted to live.
6: We didn't want to try to find a place to rent with two dogs.
That was a big component.
One thing we did was go on Reddit to try to connect with people and get their
advice and opinions on how they feel the area was.
0: We moved from Georgetown, Texas to Louisville, Kentucky.
Patrick is in the army .
7: We got permanent change of station. We've moved quite a few times. This is,
I think, our 11th move.
0: Traveling during COVID right now was a consideration because
of our older family member who is disabled,
and I myself have various things that make me a little more
susceptible. We asked around on Facebook if people knew anything about
the area.
7: Google maps,
and just kind of looking at what the areas looked like since there's a lot of
satellite photos, looking at different people's blog posts.
A lot of the houses that were available for rent,
just the cost was a lot higher than we wanted to pay.
0: We were waiting on a shower pan for almost two months now to complete one of
our bathroom renovations.
5: Try to learn as much as you can about the property. I mean,
look at the floodplains online, the county website,
tax reportings.
1: Get the disclosures before you go and see the home because it saves you time,
saves your realtor time.
7: I think the biggest factor was just finding a realtor that we trusted because
you're not going to actually be able to look at the houses yourself.
Our realtor, she made sure to, you know, look at the floors,
look at the ceiling, check the walls to see if there's any kind of water damage,
things that, you know, they probably won't have photos of.
3: We were lucky our realtor was very aware of the things like freeway noise and
loud cars. And so each time she did go somewhere virtually,
she would open the door and go sit on the balcony and be like: Do you hear cars?
Do you now hear cars? Is it too close to the train?
Is it not too close to the train?
2: Flying out for the inspection because that's where you can also not only what
you can see with your eyes,
but what an inspector can really dig in and find out that you
didn't realize when you put an offer on the house.
7: It's a beautiful home. It feels like home.
And I think that's the most important part.