You’re planning to buy a Sequim home. You’ve been planning your retirement for years. You’re just about to retire, and you want to buy your Sequim home now or at least before this next summer so that you can take advantage of prices that seem to have bottomed out and interest rates that surely are at an all time low. The timing seems right, and so you have started the process.
The Ideal Sequim Home
You’ve probably planned many things in your career and in your life. My question for you is, “Do you have a plan to buy your perfect Sequim home in a great location and at a fantastic price?” Consider this. You’ve put together some very specific plans for many things in your life. Here are a few examples of the importance of a plan.
- Building a retirement home requires a detailed plan. There’s a builder and an architect, and extensive discussions, sketches and complicated plans that comply with the IBC (International Building Code). The planning takes many months, and usually with the six months of construction, the whole process can take over a year.
- Sailing around the world takes a plan. There are months of planning to schedule the route, get permission to land at the right ports, and then there’s the weather, the food, and the contingency planning.
- Successful master traders of stocks and options learn the importance of a trading plan that keeps them on track with specific rules for identifying potential stocks, for entries and exits, for managing trades and handling stop losses.
- Successful business entrepreneurs have a plan long before they invest their life savings and open the doors to their new business.
- NBA coaches have a plan before every game.
- Teachers have a curriculum planned before each week of school.
Buying a Sequim home is not a time to shoot from the hip. I strongly urge you to have a plan to buy your Sequim home. Having spent 37 years in real estate, and having helped hundreds of clients, I can suggest an outline that might be helpful in putting together a plan that will assure your success in finding the perfect home in the best area at the lowest negotiated price.
Sequim Home Buying Plan
- First, find a knowledgeable, experienced, and trustworthy Buyer’s Agent. Listen, this is not an effort to sell myself right now. Sure I’d like buyers to work with me so I can make commissions, but there is much more to this recommendation. As a real estate lawyer I made some pretty good money because many buyers and sellers tried to do their “own thing” without sufficient knowledge or experience. (Why do you think there are so many rich lawyers?) A year and a half of litigation, a small wheel barrel full of money, and a lot of stress later and my clients proved to me over and over again the wisdom in finding the best and most experienced professional out there to help find that Sequim home. He or she does NOT cost any more than the totally inexperienced or incompetent licensee who smiles nicely and smells good. In fact, when I represent a buyer as their buyer’s agent I cost them nothing, yet I bring them a lifetime of experience. How cool is that? So I strongly recommend that people take advantage of the experience and negotiating power a good Realtor can bring to the table.
- Secondly, narrow your search of homes down to “the one,” and know precisely what to analyze and what to research on that Sequim home. I’m reminded here of something many men can identify with. If you’ve ever shopped for a used car, and if you know something about cars, when you find a model with the features and year that is a good possibility, you kick your due diligence into high gear by doing several things. For example, when you test drive it, you are looking for any signs of problems, like the front end pulling to one side when you brake hard, any shaking or vibrating, signs that the transmission may have problems with jerky shifting or any clunking noises. You may stick your head under the hood while it idles and while you rev the engine and listen to any pinging noises or any rough idling. When you buy a Sequim home, you should also know what to look for. There’s a lengthy list of things to examine, and some of these items are deal killers because the cost of installation or replacement is just too prohibitive, and some existing home designs (or heating and air circulation systems) simply cannot be changed without major construction. There are foundation and concrete issues, framing and roofing issues, electrical, heating, and cooling issues, drainage issues, potential mold issues, septic issues, water well issues, easement issues, and much more. Of course, if you make an offer on a home, you’ll want a professional home inspection, but a home inspector is not your adviser on buying and cannot and will not advise you on all the issues you should be thinking about. A buyer’s agent can, if they know.
- Third, negotiate like an expert, and believe me there are levels of negotiating skill. Negotiating a $300,000 or $750,000 deal is not exactly like getting a bargain at a garage sale, and it’s definitely not for beginners. I love going up against an inexperienced or poor negotiator, because it’s such a great victory for my clients, not only in the money they save, but in the management of the stress throughout the process. There is so much to negotiating effectively, and this isn’t the time or place to go on and on about how to negotiate like an expert, but let me make the point this way. Negotiating effectively can mean $20,000 to $80,000 in your pocket. Does that have your attention?
I hope this gets the mental process going for you as you put together you own plan.
Create Your Sequim Home Plan Now
There’s more to putting together all the details of a good purchase, but these are the three tips I would emphasize as the most important. The point is there is a logical approach to finding, negotiating, and buying your retirement home. I would encourage you to have a plan to buy your Sequim home.
Last Updated on December 27, 2011 by Chuck Marunde
We want to move to Washington State in 3-5 years. We now manage a feral cat colony in San Antonio, Texas in our backyard…it’s more like a sanctuary, really.
Wow, a “feral cat colony”! Oh my goodness.
Before buying a perfect Sequim home, you have to finalize your budget, property valuation, get a land inspection, consider the view, and so on. There’s a lot to think about, so it really makes a lot of sense to hire a buyer’s agent who knows the market and the details.
Very helpful article, because we are in the market for a new home, and so we appreciate your tips and your local knowledge of the Sequim real estate market.