So Wendy told you about our "drive-by" strategy the other day. Yes, we like to do things efficiently. If the for sale sign is on her side of the car, she's getting out to grab the flyer. My side, my flyer. We hit the neighborhoods at a somewhat leisurely pace, taking mental notes about which streets were busy, which weren't, why so many houses were for sale in some areas and not others.

After a good month or two of all of this and looking at these houses from afar, we decided to take the plunge and visit a few open houses. We were pretty sure that we knew exactly what these houses were going to to look like because we had already seen like TEN photos of the house online. What more could there be to it?? Well, we later found out that people only take pictures of the TEN good parts of the house. Which explains why some houses only have 4 or 5 photos, or some houses only have 3 photos of the house, 2 of which are the back yard...

So, Wendy and I decided to get a down and dirty strategy when it came to Open Houses. Basically, you just need to get out there and check them out, all of them. Most of the open houses that we went to we happened to stumble upon. Sometimes we were driving through the area and saw a sign, decided to pull over and then give it a run through. We weren't so concerned about what the realtor was going to think of us being there. We checked the whole house out, asked the realtor whatever questions that we had and moved on. The more houses the better. Whether they be good or bad, the more you see the more you will know what you want. The hard part next would be actually finding a house that has most of what you want, as little as possible of the stuff you don't want and one that you can actually afford.

-Allan