Review the first 3 steps (links below)

The reason were here is to find the home, but first you need to narrow down your criteria.   There are tens of thousands of homes to choose from.  At peak there were over 60,000 and normally the inventory hovers around the 40's.  You can hardly look at all of them but it is just as difficult if not fruitless to look at dozens of homes. 

Each of us has very specific needs and wants.  Narrow down what you want in a home, but also what type of lifestyle you want to lead, the schools if important and neighborhood.  

Unless you're looking for something very specific like a historic home the basics will be common to many properties.  More important is the lifestyle you want to lead: urban, suburban, golf etc.  If you want an urban lifestyle where you can walk to places a home in Surprise won't do it.  The same with work: long drives to work can get frustrating.  Know that drive times and the trade-offs vs. benefits of a particular area.

Once you have narrowed down the home type, the criteria, the area and lifestyle then searching is much easier.

Where to Search For Homes.

There are dozens of major places to search for a homes, even hundreds of aggregators who collect home information from the mls systems like the ARMLS (Arizona Regional Multiple Listing Service) plus other sites like craigslist where individuals place ads for home.   What you may notice is that many of the major national sites don't have all the homes available from the ARMLS.  Sometimes up to 30% of the homes can be missing.

A Phoenix home search like the one at Phoenix Market Trends has all (99%) the homes as listed in the ARMLS since it comes directly from it.  

You can use multiple sources to find homes: use what best fits your style since each search is a bit different then forward the addresses or mls numbers to your Realtor.

Some prefer to do the search themselves while others prefer their Realtor to look, and most of the time it's a combination of the two.  One of many things we can do is create a customized search which limits the homes to the criteria you specify: these home will arrive to your email or RSS feed reader on a regular schedule as they come on the market: once they arrive you can make a selection of homes for further investigation.

Viewing homes can be little bit trickier.  Scheduled showings with your Realtor are best.  Many times appointments need to be made: sometimes days in advance. 

The key to keep in mind is when viewing new homes or open house homes.  These should be done with your Realtor or you may lose your ability to be represented.  This has to do with procuring cause: to a new home subdivision with a builder you need to go with our Realtor: to open houses you can go alone but it's important to notify the agent at the open house that you are represented by a buyer's agent and give them our business card.

This is actually quite a fun part of the home buying process, it can be tedious and demanding, then of course you find the home you've been looking for.

In the next step (step 5) we'll get into making the offer.