Managing/organising home searching

pellio

Hi, my wife and I have been house hunting seriously for a few months and one thing we've struggled with during the process is managing and organising our search. We have a wishlist of what we want in a house - location, schools, garden, amenities etc then quite a long list of specific things about layout, space, home report etc etc

Each day we typically browse rightmove etc for matching properties, request home reports, share these with each other by email, then review all the potential properties in the evening together against our wishlist, deciding whether to book a viewing etc, rule properties out etc. It's quite laborious and the longer it's gone one, we've found it quite hard to keep track of which houses match which wish list items, which ones we're viewing, which ones we've ruled out and why etc

I just wondered if anyone else has had a similar experience, especially with house searches that have gone on for a few months etc. What sort of solutions have you come up with to help manage it/better organise reviewing and viewing of properties etc?

Cheers 
Peter

Thrugelmir

You are far better viewing properties in person. More often or not the property you eventually end up buying will require compromises. 

hazyjo

You can add your own private notes on RM. I found that facility invaluable when searching.

I'd also often type the price in on anything vaguely interesting as many dropped and you don't always get alerts if the % isn't big enough to register a price drop.

Justonemorecupoftea

When I first started I had a spreadsheet that had columns for each of the things I wanted - e.g. garden, off road parking and I'd put a little note in a like "yes/no/potentially".

The market here dried up so there weren't that many houses on it, but it was a good way to organize my thoughts and more objectively compare properties (I did things like cost per m2).

I still tried to view as many properties as possible, but we were limited to weekends and lots were gone within a week.

AdrianC

Another vote for spreadsheet.

Lines for each property
Columns for address, RM link, each of the requirements, your "rating", etc.

But don't get overly hung up on it all... Just go and view anything you think looks vaguely suitable. When we were buying here, we'd worked our way through all of our A list, and just about all of our B list. We only viewed this place because we were seeing another one with the same EA, so tagged it on - then fell in love immediately. The details were THAT bad...

user1977

As a starting point - set up custom area search in Rightmove (and the local solicitors property centre, if relevant), and alert criteria to cover everything you might want. Check daily report of new properties, "like" the ones which have potential, unlike them when you've rejected them.

youth_leader

I had a spreadsheet too, it really helped me focus as I had a small budget.  My list included must haves and nice to haves - location was my priority.