My husband and I recently decided that we are going to sell the home that we raised our children in. This has not been an easy decision because we have so many wonderful memories that have taken place in the house. We did decide that it is not financially sound to remain in a five bedroom home for the two of us. We have always wanted to retire by a lake and now seemed like the sound time to do this. We have several years before retirement; however we thought we might as well enjoy lake living now.
We called a realtor to discuss the value of our home and to research how much we could afford for the lake home. We were not comfortable with the amount of money that the realtor told us that we could spend on a home. We want a nice lake property; however we do not want to feel that we are a prisoner to the home. We decided that we would look through the multiple listing service to see what was available in the price range that we were comfortable with. Our son and his wife had recently bought a home and they told us about the multiple listing service that can be accessed online. This is how they found the home they purchased.
The multiple listing service is a listing of homes that are on the market. You can enter in the geographical area that you are interested in, the size of home you want and also the price range. The homes that are available that meet your criteria are presented to you no matter what reality company has them listed. The multiple listing service does not limit you to the reality company that that you list your home with. Also you avoid wasting time looking at properties that you know you are not interested in.
The website provides pictures, legal descriptions, directions to the homes as well as information about the area in which they are located. We looked through the multiple listing service and entered our criteria. We found several homes that seemed to be what we were looking for. We printed off the information and took a day to drive past several of the properties. By driving by the homes on our own we were able to eliminate several listings that we knew by looking at the outside would not meet our needs. We then called the realtor and had her arrange showings of the homes that we were interested in seeing further. By doing this we were not wasting the realtor’s time or our own by setting up appointments based on descriptions only. In a matter of two weeks we found our dream home in a price range that was comfortable for us.