If you’re looking at buying a home in DC, then you need to consider 3 crucial pieces of search criteria. We’ll break down each aspect of the search criteria and why it’s important to consider them before buying your home.
The three pieces of DC home buying criteria covered are:
- Price
- Size
- Location
Building your search criteria
Building your search criteria is one of the first things you need to think of before looking into buying a home. Often times, this criteria can be separated into three categories: Size, Price and Location. Despite this you only really have control over two of these. Your price is your price, and unless you have unlimited capital, you are going to have to balance the location and the size of your purchase.
Price
In your search for a home, the price is the one constant or criteria that changes the least. You can only afford what your budget allows and even after some negotiation when putting a bid on a house, there is not much that can be done to adjust the price of a house at the time of purchase. Luckily, there are financing options available to you that can help make your home more accessible than you originally anticipated.
Demand for a property is going to vary depending on many factors, the two most prominent being size and location which we will get into next. Just remember that with your price, there is going to be some balancing needed to find the perfect size and location of your prospective home.
Size
The preferred size of the home really depends on the buyer but often when considering size there can be greatly varying prices depending on what you are looking for and where you are looking.
Consider this example while building out your DC home buying criteria; you have a budget of $400k. When deciding where you want to live you notice that you can buy either a 1 bedroom, 1-bathroom condo in the heart of downtown Washington, D.C. or you can 3-bedroom 2-bathroom house in one of the many DC suburbs. So which one is better for you? Really it depends on what you are looking for. To help you narrow it down, consider some of these questions:
- Are you looking for a place to rent out?
- Do you have or are you looking to start a family?
- Are you looking to downsize?
- Do you travel for work a lot?
- Do you enjoy the social possibilities of living in the heart of a big city?
Depending on your answers to these questions, maybe a larger house in a suburb away from the heart of the city is better your needs or maybe the size of your home doesn’t matter as much and you can enjoy the benefits of a smaller home but in potentially a more desirable location.
Which brings us to our next piece.
Location
So, what about location? Location is likely going to have a sizeable effect on both the price and size of the house that you’re looking for.
Location is the criteria that has the most effect on the value of your home and ideally will help your home appreciate in value, organically.
When we say organically, we mean that rather than having to put money into your house though renovations, a good property can have its value increased from external factors, something we will talk about a little more later.
These external factors such as community projects and infrastructure development can cause your home to both increase and decrease in value, but generally speaking you will want speak with your real estate agent or do some research on your own to ensure you are buying a property that is going to appreciate in value barring unforeseen circumstances (i.e. 2008 Housing Crisis).
Purchasing in a location that is currently viewed as a poor neighborhood doesn’t mean it is always going to be that way but you would likely want to be sure that your neighborhood and surrounding community has some sort of plan in place to become more desirable or else you may be stuck in a home that doesn’t have a lot of demand or doesn’t appreciate in value during your time there.
As we touched on earlier, if you have budget of 400k you are going to find widely varying results in houses depending on where you look. While 400k may buy you a nice multi bedroom and bathroom home in a suburb of a large city, it may only net you a 1 bedroom 1-bathroom condo in the heart of the city.
Large cities are usually very densely populated, well developed and offer less availability for additional growth and often come with higher real estate costs. While suburbs, which are usually still developing and less populated, provide cheaper real estate prices in exchange for not being located directly in a large city.
External Factors
Let’s talk about some external factors that could have an impact on deciding where you are going to live. Often times these external factors should be brought up to you by your real estate agent, but in the case that they don’t mention any, it may be best to do some research on your own.
The primary external factor that should be evaluated is going to be development within the neighborhood.
When you’re looking for a home, its important to not just look at what is presently available within the area, but also look into any development plans that could be both beneficial for you or your family and positively impact the value of your home in the future. Consider the following possibilities:
- Is there a new school being developed near you?
- Is the city creating new public transportation nearby?
These are projects that will be seen in a positive light by homebuyers and could be beneficial for you and the value of the home you are looking the buy.
The same can also be said for projects that decrease the value of your home. Developments such as hospitals and schools can be especially important for a home buyer however you won’t want to be too in too close of proximity to these due to the noise pollution that comes along with them.
Homebuyers do not look upon noise pollution favorably and it could affect the value of your home.
Closing Thoughts
This discussion is built to help you narrow down your purchase criteria, but working with a Real Estate Agent is your best bet to ensure that you’re navigated through each step of the process.
Before buying a home in DC, be sure to let us know how you’re narrowing down your criteria, or reach out to The Kree Team for help in the process.
