Prospective home buyers, take note: There is such a thing as love at first sight, but it probably won`t happen to you.
You know the sensation. You`re driving down the street, scanning the crabgrass frontier, and you see it-your dream home. Sparks fly, the heart skips a beat, and after one look you know it`s right.
Well, don`t count on those first, giddy moments turning into a long-term
(housing) commitment. Once the infatuation wears thin, the realities of life-money, location and a host of other factors-start to creep into the relationship.
”There are some people who say it`s love at first sight, but some people have to do a little courting before they can make a decision on a home,” says Beverly Fleischman of Cyrus Realtors in Evanston, summing up a popular sentiment among real estate professionals. ”Many times you find people will buy a house that`s completely different from what they first looked for.”
But even though you seldom buy the first home you fall in love with, that doesn`t mean there isn`t hope for finding a place that will bring you a lifetime, or at least some years, of happiness. In real estate, as in romance, you start by looking around.
”From a buyer`s point of view, they call because they see it in the newspaper or they`ve driven by a sign,” says Susan Cooney of Coldwell Banker in Evanston, who acknowledges that the home that brings a buyer into a real estate office rarely turns out to be the one purchased.
Cooney says she asks prospective buyers two questions on that first call: First, have they talked to a lender? And second, what is their gross income?
The second question, she says, is essential in finding a home because lenders generally require that housing expenses not exceed 28 percent of your gross income.
Tallying up the housing expenses-principal, interest, taxes and insurance (otherwise known as PITI, though you`ll likely get none from lenders)-and the amount of money you have for a down payment can usually help the Realtor determine whether your dream home can become a reality-or if you`re even in the right neighborhood.
Gotta have a graystone
”Everybody who comes into our office starts off wanting a graystone in Lincoln Park or De Paul, and you do your best to put them in a home that fulfills their requirements, even though a lot of them don`t end up in that graystone,” says Dan LaGesse of North Properties Brokerage in the Edgewater/ Uptown area.
”During the first couple of meetings, there`s a lot of groundwork and you have to push customers to be honest with you,” he says. ”But once you start working with them and establish a budget, you can start locating the neighborhoods and homes that fit their requirements.”
Still, sometimes the neighborhoods fit, but the other requirements change, as Dan and Lesa Rizzolo`s home-buying odyssey proved. First the couple started looking for an eight-flat as a live-in income property, but a would-be partner in the deal ended up taking a job in Singapore.
Strike 1.
Then the Rizzolos contracted to buy a two-flat, which they planned to convert into a rental three-flat, pending inspection. The inspection turned up asbestos shingling on the house and no agreement could be reached as to who would pay for its removal.
Strike 2.
Finally, a Saturday afternoon drive-by, at the suggestion of LaGesse, their agent, turned up an interesting two-flat in Ravenswood with one tenant living in it. The Rizzolos liked it for a number of reasons, the neighborhood, yard and garage not the least of them. Shortly before closing, the tenant moved out and Lesa found out she was pregnant with the couple`s first child.
The Rizzolos bought the property anyway and are gutting it and converting it to a single-family home, a far cry from their original plans to buy an income-producing property.
”The nice thing about it, which is going to sound strange, is that it has no charm to it. The layout is nice, the square footage is nice and it`s easy to change,” says Lesa, whose career as an architect has been more than handy in renovating the house.
From old to new
But all that rehab work isn`t for everyone, as Gina Trimarco learned when she and husband, Brian Piper, began looking at houses a few years back. Though they started out in search of an older home in the Little Italy area near the University of Illinois-Chicago, they eventually chose a contemporary townhouse in Lincoln Park.
”We wanted something older, with character, so we started looking around the U. of I. area because we thought prices would be better,” says Trimarco. ”What was in our price range turned out to be dilapidated and needed the type of work we weren`t really able to do.”
Instead, Trimarco and Piper reassessed their needs and found Lincoln Park`s access to the lakefront, downtown and friends to be more advantageous. Still, there was the price thing.
”We didn`t think we could afford Lincoln Park, but the more you look around, the more you realize what you can get,” says Trimarco, who worked with ”at least three” real estate agents in Lincoln Park, including one referred by the Realtor they`d worked with in Little Italy. The experience was not the best, Trimarco acknowledges.
”I guess they`re used to dealing with people who have lots and lots of money, and not first-time home buyers,” she says. Also, the fact that the couple kept changing their minds about what they wanted made the search longer and more difficult. Yet, taking their time had at least one advantage: ”The longer we looked, the more money we saved,” she says.
Agent and ally
But, buyers be warned: Many real estate agents look unfavorably on people who call a new agent for every new house they fall in love with.
”It`s more in your interest to find an agent who understands your needs, because they`re really going to work for you,” says Cooney, who acknowledges that some agents dump customers who jump from agent to agent in search of the dream home.
”Most agents are commissioned, and they`ll work more diligently with a buyer they`ve established a rapport with,” says Cooney, who is also president of the North Side Real Estate Board, which has a multiple listing service with more than 10,000 properties on a computerized database.
”With the multiple listing service, it`s not like you have to sell them
(just) Evanston or (just) Rogers Park,” she says. ”The buying agent and selling agent have the whole shared inventory of North Side properties available through computer access immediately.”
And for properties out of their listing area, agents will usually be more than happy to refer another agent, because they get a ”piece of the action,” according to Cooney. At a multi-location agency such as Coldwell Banker, the referring agent can send a prospective buyer to another office and he or she earns a share of the eventual commission.
The big payoff
Looking around eventually paid off for Trimarco and Piper, who found a three-bedroom, two-bath townhouse with a patio that had been a rental property before they bought it. ”Right away that made it about $10,000 lower then other townhomes in the area,” says Trimarco.
”Sometimes it just takes people longer and they have to go through the gamut of extensive looking,” says Cyrus` Fleischman, who has showed buyers multiple houses, only to have the customer finally realize the first home he saw really was the one he was looking for.
And, occasionally, buyers find everything they`re looking for in one house, and it`s a match made in heaven. When Tom Clancy and his then-fiance, Celine Garceau, decided to buy a home about a year ago, they searched a few neighborhoods with a long wish list based on jobs, nightlife, pets, hobbies, budgets and the future.
”The first thing was location, for convenience to work and stores, and we wanted to be in the city for entertainment,” says Clancy, who also looked for a property with a rental unit that would help pay the mortgage now, and lend itself to conversion into a single-family home later.
Their wishes were answered in a Bucktown two-flat that`s convenient to Clancy`s job at the Board of Trade and a block from the expressway, which gives Garceau quick access to the northwest suburbs, where she practices show jumping on her horse, Max. There`s also the yard for Yogi, their dog, and Spike, their cat, and a two-car garage. Perhaps a wee bit of Irish luck in turning up such a home, Mr. Clancy?
”This place was a great find,” says Clancy, who recently returned from a honeymoon in Jamaica with his new bride.
They are, he says, planning on living happily ever after, or at least for the next several years, in the home.
