House Hunting by the Numbers

For those of you who don't know, Ian and I have been looking-- with increasing urgency-- over the last year to purchase a home. Last March we started the process by finding out how much house we could afford. That means we went in to find out how much a bank would loan us, and how much monthly payments would be/what we could afford to pay. Since that time we have looked at many houses and learned many things.

I have learned that I can tell a lot about a house before walking inside by finding out what year it was built. I have learned that if a house is built in a certain neighborhood, I can reliably predict that the house will be one of three layouts. I have learned that if you want to purchase a house that is a short sale, you need to have more patience that we currently possess. I have learned that it can be fun to explore different homes, but that I go through the house more quickly and with less commentary if the owners/tenants are present.

There is more that I have learned, but I wanted to get to the numbers portion. I believe we started looking at houses in April, but didn't get serious about looking until a few months later. Our search was slowed a little by the fact that our agent/friend and I were both pregnant during this time. She delivered in November, and I delivered in early March. In looking at houses, most of the time I would go on an MLS site and look up all the houses that fit the criteria we were looking for and select the most promising-looking ones. Then I would tell our agent which ones we wanted to look at and away we would go. In mid-August I started keeping a spreadsheet listing all the houses I looked at online, which ones I wanted to see, and which ones we actually visited.

So here are the numbers:
Months taken up looking for a house: 13
Houses I looked up online as possibilities since August 19: Over 150
Houses we physically entered since August 19: At least 57
Births that took place during time frame: 2
Maximum number of children looking at houses with us: 8
Average number of children looking at houses with us: 2-4
Offers put in on houses: 7
Offers accepted: 1

So here is a picture of the front of the house that Ian and I will be closing on in the next couple of weeks. We are super excited to be home owners to finally finish this stage of house hunting.