Best Communities, Best Schools, Best of Everything

Where are the Best Schools in the Austin area? Where are the best communities to live? Where do we get the best bang for our dollars? Where do you live?

I hear these questions all the time, and I hear how clients' friends who live in the Austin area answer these questions (for them and for everyone they know). We might glibly call these friends "Arm chair Realtors". Unfortunately, being a home owner and having access to the internet does not make someone a good resource to buy your next home, any more than a subscription to Golf magazine and a new set of Ping clubs makes me a good golfer. It may help lower my handicap 1 or 2 strokes, but does not automatically put me in the same category with even the worst professionals in the business. It is just information and clubs. I still need experience, knowledge of the course, and lots of practice every day to be a good Realtor (...I mean golfer).

Any person who has bought or sold a house in the last few years knows that buying and selling Real Estate go so far beyond online photos, and an office survey of which communities are the best places to live. And the process goes well beyond boiler-plate contracts and proforma information. Your needs for a home are far more complex than a few photographs, and the opinion of the local PTA that their school is the best in the city. The number of factors that must be weighed and considered to buy a home are overwhelming, and it is impossible to create a spread sheet large enough or "smart enough" to measure the trade-offs that are a necessary part of EVERY Real Estate transaction. You need to understand what you are trading off on any given purchase and what you are getting in return for your money.

Some buyers wait until they get ready to sell their home to understand the trade-off that they purchased. Probably not the best time to understand if you bought well or not. And make no mistake, when you are talking about such an incredibly complex decision in your life, every property has its trade-offs. You never get 100% of all of these things, so the question is--which ones are most important to you? and how do you weight and measure these factors for your home purchase:

• Proximity to work
• Community
• Home features
• Home age and condition
• Amenities inside and near by the community
• Schools
• Local retail and access
• Timing for your purchase 
• Inspections and contract work
• Price and budget

All of these things matter to most home buyers, but these things matter differently to different buyers. For some buyers, schools are the most important factor, and for others--schools are not their primary concern. For some people, having proximity to downtown or the lakes is critical to their quality of living, and to someone who works from home, they may only want to have a big yard and the peace and quite of living away from major road ways. These decision diagrams are enough to drive an otherwise completely organized person crazy, because at some point you have to come to grips with the fact that there is no end to the number of decision points and directions that one can take. So--what is one to to do?


Hire a good Realtor to help you sort through the needs and desires, and help you begin to narrow down your search to the area, community and home that best fits your family needs and your family priorities. For a Realtor who does this 65 hours a weeks, and helps dozens of families every year go through this process, it is a very methodical and organized process. This is what we do--help buyers navigate through the approximately 12,000 properties For Sale in the Greater Austin area so that clients can settle into the community for a happy and productive life.

You may have bought several homes in the past, maybe even bought homes in the Austin area recently. It's not enough to go out on your own to find a home. If you do not buy and sell homes everyday in this Austin market place, you are probably not the best person to be your own Realtor. You will probably miss at least one thing that at some point in time you will wish you had known. Maybe two. Maybe more. You can be a smart person and still get the (free) services of a Buyer's Agent to help you in your home pursuits.
 

If you need a Realtor ®, I would be honored to assist you in your home search, purchase or selling your Austin area home.

tT

Tim Thornton, Realtor ®
Top Producer 2010, 2009, 2008
Century Club member
Zip Realty, Inc.
Austin, Texas
(512) 914.4665  mobile