How to Make the Most Out of Your Real Estate Viewings
**Disclaimer**
I am not a professional real estate agent. The tips and advice in this post are purely from my own experience and do not reflect the opinions of any persons mentioned
If you’ve followed Part 0 and Part 1 of this series, you now have everything you need to go on home viewings. Congrats!
In the past, when the housing market wasn’t as crazy (speaking for Toronto, Canada of course), most people would see the same home a few times over multiple days before making an offer. In today’s crazy market, buyers don’t have the time to schedule multiple viewings before it’s sold to someone else. Typically, if you go to see a home, after you step out, you have to decide that day whether or not you want to put in an offer (yes, it’s that fast).
In this post, I’ll go over some tips and tricks for how to make the most out of your home viewing appointments and at the very end, I’ll share my own experiences which led me to putting in an offer on my current condo.
1. Keep an Open Mind
It’s becoming increasingly difficult to purchase a home that doesn’t require some upgrades or renovations, especially when it’s your first home. When you walk into a home, keep a note of things you like and things you don’t like. Out of the things you don’t like, they should fall under two categories: cosmetic and structural.
Cosmetic
Cosmetic changes are changes that are relatively low-cost and easy to do. More specifically for condos, they are changes you can make without getting them approved by the condo board (making them less of a headache to do). For example, if you walk in and don’t like the wall colour, you can easily change that with new paint, a paint tray, a drop cloth, painter’s tape, brushes/roller and a weekend of your time. The same applies to light fixtures, knobs, switch plates and cabinets (you can paint them if you don’t like the colour). Cosmetic issues should not be a major factor when deciding to put in an offer. The main points to consider would be the cost of paint and supplies required and your skill level.
Never painted before? YouTube has a plethora of videos explaining the supplies you need and technique. All it takes is patience. Home improvement is a journey and very rarely do you get it right on the first try.
Structural
When people say that a home has “great bones'', they’re talking about structural characteristics. Another way to look at it is structural changes are permanent changes to your dwelling that cannot be easily reversed. They are usually more expensive and may require a tradesperson to complete. In the condo realm, structural changes usually require approval by the condo board before you start. Want to upgrade your floor from parquet to hardwood? You have to ask your condo board. Want to knock down a kitchen wall to make it open-concept? Have to ask the condo board. Every condo corp. is different, however, the general rule is that if you’re going to make permanent changes, then it needs to be approved. These changes can be deal breakers because of the high cost and/or permissibility so choosing a layout you like should be a higher priority on your list of “wants”.
In short, if most of the things you don’t like are cosmetic, these are easily fixable and should not prevent you from putting in an offer if you like everything else about the home. If there are key structural parts of the home that you don’t like, think about: can you afford the renovations right away? If not, how long will it take to save for these renovations? can you be happy in the home until those renovations are started/completed? If your renovation request is rejected can you live in the home as is?. If you’ve answered “no” to any of these, this is probably not the home for you.
Side Tangent (Gripes of Condo Ownership)
This is one of the few gripes I have about owning a condo. You’re still restricted on the types of renovations that you can do within your own unit vs a freehold (non-condo) home. You also can’t ask before you purchase if these proposed changes will be accepted.
Another issue is if you own a condo with a balcony, you own the condo unit but not the balcony or the outside of the door (the side that faces the hallway). The balcony may be a bit run down, have peeling paint, or have an undesirable oil stain on the concrete, but because the condo corp. owns that balcony, you’re greatly limited on what you can do to improve it. Want a bright red front door? Can’t. Most condo corps. want their doors to look the same on the outside for uniformity so you are unable to make changes. However, a way around that is you can paint the inside of the door because it technically doesn’t face the hallway (I’m doing this with my future front door, so take that, condo management!).
2. Go With a List!
Going to a viewing appointment is exciting. I remember going on my first listing: excited, wide-eyed, distracted by my new surroundings. As a result, I completely forgot to check anything on my wishlist other than: did it have two bedrooms? Check, did it have two bathrooms? Check. I didn’t check to see if the bathrooms had fans. I didn’t check to see if there was a spot for my library nook (it’s been a dream of mine to have one). I also didn’t check to see if my other furniture would fit in its future home.
It’s important to keep a list of “wants'' but also keep a list of measurements for the bigger pieces of furniture that you already possess. Make sure to bring a tape measure, especially if the pieces you have are large and unusually shaped. It will cost you more time and money to get rid of your old furniture and buy alternatives to fit your new space than it will to reuse the pieces you already have. I have an emotional attachment to some of my furniture pieces so I would be devastated if I had to get rid of them (one of them being an old-fashioned bird cage; you’ll see that in a future post when I style my new home).
3. Don’t be Polite
Bonus Tip
Checking walls and baseboards for gaps and damage is important too and can be added to the list that you bring to the viewing.
As a Canadian, I feel that the stereotype of being polite proves to be true in some cases. Whenever I am over at a friend’s house, I’m not one to poke around bathroom cabinets. I won’t grab a glass from their kitchen unless I’m given permission (in some cases I have to be told 20 times before I feel comfortable grabbing dishware on my own, even though I’ve known them for over a decade). While these are polite social practices, they are horrible for home viewings.
The purpose of the home viewing is to poke around. You want to open all the closet doors to get a picture of the size (including bedroom closets *gasp*). Open up the kitchen cabinets, pull out all the drawers. This is for two purposes: 1) to get a more accurate picture of how much cabinet/drawer/closet space the home provides, and 2) to make sure that everything is in working order. You won’t know that there is a broken drawer unless you try it, especially with staged homes. Appearances can be deceiving!
My Experience
Truth be told, my partner and I went on two viewings on the same day before putting an offer on our current condo. I knew before going to the appointments that I had to lower my expectations. Our budget was $550k, which, for a two bedroom, two bathroom condo close to Toronto (and transit), was a tall order. I saw the photos for both condos and while one looked amazing (and was more expensive), the other one was going to need a lot of work and it wasn’t in the best area. I already had a bias towards the first condo so I was hoping that it was just as good as the pictures.
We pulled up to the first condo building and I was really impressed with how clean the lobby was and how tall the ceilings were. The ceilings were atrium-style and made of glass to allow for natural sunlight. Due to COVID-19, we weren’t allowed to go in and see the amenities, but we were able to see the pool and hot tub through the window and while it looked more dated with the tiling, again, it looked clean and well maintained. I stepped into the first condo and was completely blown away. It looked exactly like the pictures online. The living room and dining room were mostly windows (facing trees for privacy) so it let in a ton of natural light. At the time, I lived in a basement apartment with no natural sunlight so this was a major plus. I was completely in awe with all the upgrades, how clean the apartment was, and the fact that there was a sunroom that was big enough for a small vertical garden.
The condo wasn’t perfect and did have some downsides. The condo fees were very expensive which made our monthly payments (condo fees, property taxes and mortgage payments) right at the top of what we could afford. Although the condo was close to transit, I would have to take the GO train and also TTC for the fastest way to work which doubled my transportation costs per month. In the future, my partner and I would like to rent out this unit as an income property and our agent told us that this unit would be harder to rent out compared to the next property that we were going to see.
Despite the negatives, I knew within a few minutes of walking into the unit that I wanted to put an offer in.
Having left the first viewing and moving onto the second, the first condo was going to be hard to beat. We arrived at the second condo and I was immediately hit with a reality check. The building was a lot older, in a more rundown area. The inside lobby had dim lighting. We had to go to the stairwell to retrieve the key from the special real estate lock. It appeared from the pungent smell of cigarette smoke that the stairwell was a popular place to light up. I knew that using the stairs wouldn’t be an option for me without triggering my smoke allergy. We stepped inside the condo and overall it was well kept, but a lot of cosmetic changes would have to be made like changing the parquet flooring and tearing down the brick wall paper that was on the walls of the kitchen. The condo was two levels, with all the bathrooms located on the second floor side by side. Another quirk of the unit was that it had two front doors; the other opened two floors below the front door that we entered. It did have a giant bust of Mozart (which I appreciated, as I’ve played piano for decades) and also a giant fish tank but, unfortunately, those wouldn’t be included in the sale.
After the second viewing, our agent, Cody (I will explain in my Condos.ca review why I had two agents) met with us outside the building (with masks and social distancing) to discuss if we wanted to put in an offer on either condo. He let us know that the second condo would be easier to rent out, and it was cheaper than the first (leaving extra money for improvements). However, it was further from work and the living conditions weren’t as nice as the previous condo. I asked Cody why the first condo was on the market for so long and he said that there was nothing wrong with the condo that he knew of and the building was well-managed with a good building certificate. I took this as a sign of “right place, right time” and we decided that even though the first unit was more expensive, it was worth putting in an offer. In the moment, I had a strong feeling that we wouldn’t come across another unit that looked that nice and had all the bells and whistles for less.
I created the previous list because while I was looking around with wide-eyed excitement, I didn’t do any of the previous tips and I wish I had. Luckily, the staging furniture was similar in size to what I have now and I don’t have too many large pieces (I don’t own a couch in my current apartment) so I won’t have to part with any of my treasures (I swear I’m not a hoarder). I also let my social politeness get in the way and didn’t check to see if all the cabinets were functioning properly, drawers etc. Hopefully if you’ve gotten to this point, you’ll learn from my mistakes and be better prepared for your future home viewings!
