As a home buyer, having meaningful real estate conversation with people important to you should come first. Doing so will allow you to uncover the characteristics of your perfect home. This boils down to sharing stories and meaningful moments that bring what’s possible to the surface while allowing other’s to connect in a positive way.

After meaningful real estate conversations have occurred and everyone has shared what they value, it’s time to rapidly find out what’s possible. From this space, you can begin to synthesize what your perfect home looks like. Are you ready?

The Perfect Home Exercise

You will need the following items for this activity. Prepare these beforehand so you can easily transition from sharing stories to mind-mapping traits of what a perfect home looks like.

1. Multi-color 3×3 post-it notes.
2. Multi-color sharpie markers.
3. Large 30×25 post-it flip chart.
4. Smartphone with a timer.

Set up this exercise with a question or two. Write it at the top of the large post-in flip chart in big letters for everyone to see:

“What makes this the perfect home today

and why do I absolutely love it?”

Place the post-it flip chart on the wall or a table with everyone circled around, then provide everyone with a stack of 3×3 post-it notes and sharpie. Take a moment to explain how important it is for the group to use divergent thinking when creating ideas. Meaning, you will generate as many ideas and potential solutions from a single piece of information (or question).

This exercise is less about thinking and more about brainstorming. Divergent thinking is a significant factor in creative thinking that has built disruptive brands like Airbnb and Uber.

Rapid Fire Housing Characteristics

When everyone is ready, set 3 minutes on your smartphone timer. Repeat the perfect home question one last time and say, “3… 2… 1… GO!”

As the timer runs, each person must write as many ideas as they can on a post-it note. This includes yourself! While placing notes on the flip chart, encourage the group to keep going and offer positive thought joggers to maintain momentum.

Once the timer expires, ask everyone to wrap up their final thoughts. It’s okay to extend the time another 1-2 minutes if the ideas continue to flow. Totally up to you!

Once all the ideas emerge, have everyone work together to build columns for each theme and place them vertically making every idea visible. You can place unrelated thoughts or ideas to the side. However, just because an idea doesn’t carry collective weight, it doesn’t mean it’s bad!

With all the themes in front of the group, thank everyone for taking the time to share their best ideas. Afterwards, begin to enroll everyone into what’s possible by sharing what your perfect home might look like based on the ideas that emerged.

As a real estate agent, I cannot stress how important it is to have people in your life helping you seek out real estate opportunities in finding the right property. This process gathers help from those closest to you and casts a wider net to find your perfect home.

The Must Have List

Because these are the characteristics of your perfect home, it’s best that you create the Must Have List on your own or with the person you’re purchasing with. Use the collective insights you’ve gathered up until now and circle your Top 3 themes that came up during the Perfect Home Exercise.

This Top 3 Must Have List acts as your guiding principles for your home search and crowdsourcing everyone’s wisdom creates a massive amount of clarity for you in a short period of time. 

 

Next week…

We’ll create your Top 3 Must Have List and begin to test the characteristics of your perfect home by choosing which homes look at.

See you next week!

Most buyers begin their search for the perfect home by searching online, stopping by an open house, or buying what a family member tells them to. Nothing hurts my heart more than hearing stories of buying decisions driven by emotion instead of a purposeful plan. Emotions can run wild during a hot real estate market! You must be prepared before jumping in the home buying process to find the perfect one.

Here’s How to Win

Create Meaningful Conversation

How easy is it to have meaningful conversation with those most important to you – your family, friends, and significant other. Start by discussing openly about each other’s best moments in life such as your best adventures, travel experience, and simple successes. By having this, you can connect the dots of the past and see what you want your future home to be. Steve Jobs said it best in his Stanford commencement speech.

“…you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”

– Steve Jobs

You can then drive this conversation to real estate experiences. You don’t have to talk to a real estate agent or a mortgage broker. All you need is to gather the people that means the most to you. This allows you to find the perfect home before even looking for one.

Craft Meaningful Real Estate Questions

Ask purposeful questions that you can layer and take deeper through casual conversation. For example, asking others to share a moment  when they were the most excited to live in a new house, city, or neighborhood. Preplanning specific questions will help drive the conversation to where you want it to be. Then you can add layers to that by asking supporting inquiries and real estate thought joggers.

Don’t be afraid to go deep…

• What moment made you the most proud?
• What contributed to that experience?
• How important was this to you?

Use real estate thought joggers…

• Was it the brand new upgrades that you loved?
• Or owning downtown near all the action?
• How about the fix-up potential in a home?
• Were you excited about being away from home?

Sharing the most exciting moments in your life creates a positive energy in the room. The relationships become stronger while also discovering more about yourself. You are connecting the dots of the past by simply relating to stories that made you feel the most alive. These stories allow you to connect, feel safe, and create eagerness for what’s to come. That’s where a Must Have List will emerge!

Uncover your Core Values and Strengths 

Hearing their stories, you can now decide if that also resonates with you. In my own family, the core values and beliefs they have around  quality and ability to improve properties also inspires me. Once you’ve uncovered your core values and strengths, it’s time to begin developing your Must Have List. These are clear objectives that cut through indecision and eliminate buyer’s remorse. That clarity will guide you during the home buying process, especially if and when you aren’t finding the results that you’re looking for or the pressure is too high. Having a meaningful real estate conversation first before creating your list, it will give a lot purpose and intention behind it.

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