SIGHT UNSEEN

This is not how I pictured buying a home, but then when the choices are sparse, you take what you can get.  My husband started working in California two weeks after he was given a promotion. My daughter and I flew out for a house hunting trip 5 weeks later.  Finding a house you can afford in a nice area is very hard in California.  Each time I would find something on Zillow or Realtor.com and tell my realtor about it, he would look it up and of course it was already under contract.  During our house hunting trip we were not able to find a home but we did find the area we wanted to live.
After all the moving I've done over the years I have become very efficient at finding a home quickly.  Most of the time I only get one or two trips to the new city to find something.  To me, the most important step in finding a home is getting in a good school district.  I would rather have the smallest home in a good school district then the biggest home in a bad one.  Before I ever travel to the new location I research schools.  You're going to think this is crazy but I will tell you one of my steps to finding the right area.  I go online and look up locations for stores such as Nordstrom, Pottery Barn, William Sonoma, Anthropology, along with any other high end chain store.  I figure these companies are not going to put a store in an area with a community that does not invests in itself.  Then I take those area's and start researching the schools.  Go to greatschools.org, go to the district and school websites.  I also go to state websites and look for rankings.  By the time I've done that research, I usually have 3 or 4 areas I'm interested in.  That's when I hit real estate websites so I can see homes and have a list of homes I want my realtor to take me to see on my house hunting trip.

This works unless you're moving to California!  You will be able to close in on a location but finding a home in your budget is very, very hard.  With my house hunting trip over and no time for another trip due to working full time, taking care of the kids, and trying to sell our current home, I told my husband to look on the weekends for a home and good luck!:)  When he found the home we bought he sent me pictures and had to act fast because there was not much available.  I think he did good, and I can see potential.  He was so nervous the entire moving trip to California.  He knew it was going to be a shock for us to see, it needs so much work. That is okay with me though, because I will have fun making it our home.