And on the flip side, some subdivisions have scads of similar homes, all of which are in good shape, all listed at a similar price, making it nearly impossible to choose just one.

Here are five indicators that a particular home you’re viewing might be “The One” – the property on which you’ll want to place an offer:

1.       You feel possessive about it, instantly. I once showed a less-than-fabulous home to a buyer who stepped in the front door, opened her eyes wide, and uttered in a much-quieter-than-normal voice, “I would cry.” We got a good laugh out of this later, after she found and bought a home that made her feel virtually the opposite.

Not only did the winning home bring a smile to her face, it also made her instantly possessive. She didn’t just want it – she wanted it immediately. She could barely even wait to write the offer paperwork! When another agent showed up to bring a buyer through the place while we were still there, she lingered leisurely (in hopes they would just leave) and secretly looked at them with daggers in her eyes (out of competitiveness, because in her heart, the home had already become hers).

If you walk through a place and leave wondering how quickly you can get your offer in, how much you’d offer to beat someone else out, or what you can do to lock it down quickly, it might be “The One.”

2.       You start rationalizing its flaws away.  Train tracks 10 feet from the bedroom window? Next door neighbor that runs a pigeon-sitting service? Okay – I exaggerate. But if you find yourself viewing a home with traits that you would normally deem undesirable or as deal-killers, yet you like the place so much that you instinctively compile a mental list of reasons those traits just don’t matter, you might have found “The One.”

Now, smart buyers should be aware of a syndrome I like to call “Pottery Barn Psychosis,” whereby the aesthetics of a wonderfully staged home with amazing curb appeal can hypnotize a buyer, rendering them blind to the negative property features, which would be glaring or grave concerns if the place weren’t so stinking cute. It’s fine to make a conscious decision that the pros of a place outweigh its cons, and even to consciously re-rank your priorities in light of a particular property’s advantages. But buyers should take steps to avoid falling victim to Pottery Barn Psychosis (and the Buyer’s Remorse that often follows suit) by writing down your absolute musts and deal-breakers before you ever step foot in a single property – and by revisiting this document before you write an offer and again before you remove your contingencies.

3.  The bathroom and kitchen don’t disgust you. We humans are born with only two fears in life: the fear of falling and the fear of loud noises. By about eight months old, we start to acquire new fears, and most of us never stop.  Among the first fear most people learn: the fear of other people’s kitchens and bathrooms.

I exaggerate (again!), but it is true that generally speaking, other people’s kitchens and bathrooms hold definite gross-out potential.  There’s just something about what goes on in those rooms that seems exceptionally intimate and even unsanitary.  So, if you happen to find yourself falling in love with a home’s river rock shower floor or drooling over the pot-filler over the stove and the built-in cookbook stand on the countertop, that’s a sign that you’re falling head over heels with a home that might just be “The One.”

4.  You involuntarily envision your own family, furniture, decor, daily activities or remodeling choices in/to the home.  They say that the best staging helps prospective buyers envision their own idealized lives taking place in the staged home.  But whether or not a property is staged, if you find your mind’s eye Photoshopping a given property to insert your own kids and sofa into the living room, your dining table and favorite wall hangings into place in the dining room, and your daily meditation in the breakfast nook – or even start mentally removing walls entirely – it’s entirely possible that the home you’re in could be “The One” for you.

5.  You lose interest in seeing other homes.  I once took some buyers out for their first house hunt in my territory after they’d spent two years looking for homes in a neighboring area, without ever making a single offer.  I’d planned to show them seven homes, but when they got to the fourth property, they declared that they’d found their home, and they neither wanted nor needed to see any more.  I insisted that they finish the list, if for no other reason than to confirm their choice and to avoid feeling later that they hadn’t seen enough nearby homes to compare theirs to.  They humored me and saw the last three places on the list, then promptly bought house #4 and still live there, blissfully happy, to this day.

When you find “The One,” continuing the house hunt you may have obsessed over for months, even years, starts to seem silly, like a waste of the energy you could be using to move into your new home.

Homeowners:  How did you know when you’d found the right home for you and your family?

Agents:  What signs have you seen buyers exhibit when they’ve found “The One?”

from Trulia’s Realty Check

Not only will your agent help you understand these numbers and how they should relate to your own offer or response, your agent is also in a good position to reach out to the other agent and collect any available information about what is important to the other party: do they care more about moving quickly, getting top dollar, or certainty that the other side can close the deal?  The other agent isn’t obligated to divulge any information but often will, in the interest of facilitating a deal that addresses their client’s priorities.

Finally, it’s uber-critical to know what your own priorities are. Ultimately, the bar for whether your negotiation for your home is successful is based on what the home and the terms of the contract are worth to you.  Know your own bottom and top line for price, and what your own priorities are, before the negotiation begins.

2.  Approach the negotiation as a problem-solving challenge.  Today’s negotiations are really more like problem solving scenarios, when you take into account all the parties whose needs must be met for the transaction to move forward.  Traditionally, negotiations were a two-way power struggle between the buyer and seller, based primarily on their wants and their respective bargaining leverage. But on today’s market, the bank – or banks on both sides — often have their own guidelines and needs that impact the terms of the deal, whether it be the seller’s lender insisting on a certain price in a short sale, or the buyer’s lender and appraiser refusing to lend anything above a certain price.

Many a buyer has thought they were scoring a great deal by scoring a bargain basement price on a short sale, only to have the seller’s bank condition approval of the deal on a massive increase in the sale price.  And the opposite is also true: a significant number of the deals that fall apart on today’s market do so because the home fails to appraise for the purchase price the buyer has agreed to pay.  Ultimately, this is even the case when it comes to the buyer’s and seller’s needs: if the buyer can’t qualify for a high enough mortgage, or the seller can’t pay their mortgage balance off, at the price in the other party’s mind, there will be no deal, and the negotiation is inherently unsuccessful.

In this context, it’s more important than ever to approach your negotiation as an exercise in problem solving, with the aim of meeting the needs of as many parties involved as possible.  If you get some of your wants met, too, you’re golden!

3.  Manage your own mindset. You probably shouldn’t even try to buy a home that you don’t strongly like, or even love. It often makes sense to hone in on a specific offer price (within the range what is reasonable for a home) based on how much you want it, or how much you’d hate to lose it – especially in a multiple offer situation, where you may only have one chance to make an offer.

With that said, be aware that when it comes to negotiating, she who is the least emotionally attached to a particular outcome usually has the greater bargaining power. The more attached you are to a particular home or a particular price point or set of terms for your home, the more likely you are to panic, freak out, throw money at the situation or cave in on important points unnecessarily when you get even the faintest sense that your desires may be at risk.

When it comes to managing your own mindset and stamina through the course of a negotiation (uncertainty is tiring!), knowing what is and what isn’t within each party’s – control is key. Your agent can help you stay clear on this, which will help you avoid the emotional exhaustion that results from trying to negotiate things that are not really negotiable (e.g., the bank’s bottom line, cosmetic repairs on most foreclosures, etc.). On the flip side, knowing the full range of items that can be negotiated – which extends beyond price into areas like deposit amount, length of escrow, seller repairs, and whether the property is to be taken in as-is condition – empowers you to maximize how compelling your offer is to the other side, given the resources at your disposal.

4.  Minimize time pressures.  Over the years, I have seen many a buyer and seller make brow-raisingly questionable offers and counteroffers based solely on the fact that they have to move by a certain deadline. Because shelter is a basic human need, the prospect of having to move out, relocating to a new job or moving to a new town without having housing in place can cause even the most nimble among us to feel ungrounded.

Problem is, in the context of buying a home, moving deadlines can cost you thousands and thousands of dollars – and can even cause you to make needless compromises in terms of the actual property itself: compromises you might later (deeply) regret. If you are approaching a deadline for moving out or relocating, you’d do better to find a rental housing situation that will work for awhile or will work as a Plan B than to try to hurry your home’s purchase or sale to meet the deadline.

5.  Act and react quickly – not impulsively.  When you find ‘your’ place, make an offer. When you get an offer or counteroffer), respond to it. In real estate, time is always of the essence, and prolonged hesitation often results in lost opportunities. There’s nothing wrong with sleeping on a decision overnight, especially if the ‘right’ move is unclear.  But you never know when another buyer or another property might show up on the scene and change the whole bargaining dynamic, costing you more money or wooing away your home’s buyer.

This is why it’s so important to be clear on the market data, your own budget and your own top and bottom lines from the start, so that you are positioned to act quickly, strategically and intelligently when the circumstances require it.

from Trulia Realty Check

Do You Have The Money?

Is Your Financial House in Order?

Those great loans with little or nothing down are not available to everyone: You need good credit. For at least one year prior to purchasing a home, you should assure that every credit card bill, rent check, car payment and other debt is paid in full and on time.