House Buying in Boulder
Several of my friends have asked me about my experience shopping for a home in Boulder and whether we liked or realtor. We didn’t like our realtor at all and we were thinking of switching when we found the house we wanted to buy. Anyway, I’ve been sending some of the things I wish I knew about buying a home in Boulder and thought I’d turn it into a blog post.
For being a small town in an affordable state, Boulder is kinda ridiculous (not SF or NYC ridiculous…but still). It was surprisingly competitive. I’ve had friends find a place in a month and people who are still looking after a year. My personal low point was finding a home that we both loved. There were no showings til the open house on Sunday but we walked by it Friday and liked what we saw. When Sunday rolled around, we woke up only to find the house was gone. Three agents asked to see it before the open house and they got into a bidding war, and it was gone by the time of the open house. We clearly didn’t have an aggressive agent, and I totally cried, which is ridiculous.
The best advice I got about buying a home was from my current CEO. “You think home buying should be fun but it’s so depressing. Your money never goes as far as you think it should and you always have to compromise.”
Your realtor should:
- Be the first to get on new listings (our realtor waited for us to send him listings)
- Be aggressive on showings (e.g. if they say no showings until the open house, your realtor will need to call anyway.)
- Be realistic on what you get for your money in Boulder (Reality sucks but our realtor talked us out of some homes that could have potentially been awesome. In no way did he want us to purchase our home, which was a biiiig bargain.)
- Listen to your needs (our realtor kept trying to push us to North and East Boulder when location was pretty much our #1 requirement. He was fine with us living in Longmont. We were not.)
- Have hustle and send out letters to where you want to live (we got a letter from a realtor letting us know his client wanted to live in Vikas’ hood. My co-worker found his house by going to their garage sale first and telling her that he was looking to buy in their neighborhood. We also saw homes with signs before they hit the Internet.)
- Let you know about listings first. (Your realtor should have a network that lets him know before anyone else that homes will go on sale.)
- Be detail oriented (our realtor never told our mortgage person our price had dropped by 10K.)
- Give you a gift (I know this is petty as all get out but you just gave the person a ton of money. Make the gesture of a bottle of wine or flowers or something to say nice working with you.)
