For our first home we probably looked at about 30 houses. At the time we were first time buyers and really unsure of what we wanted. This was all before the age of internet so there was no way to weed houses out based on interior pics or anything like that. When we bought our second house we knew exactly what we wanted, we searched the mls and only went to see houses that exactly met our criteria. We actually only visited 3 houses over a period of about a month and ended up buying the house we now live in (been here 10 years).

I've tried really hard to weed out houses before doing a visit. We've driven by many more houses than we have seen. I've weeded out a lot by photos and listing or looking up restrictions and finding them unacceptable. But...sometimes not everything is in photos.

In one house the utility room was tiny and the freezer had to be kept in the detached garage. That was not something in the listing or photos.

Another house whoever took the photos for the listing must have been a photographic genius. The photos made the house look wonderful. I'm usually very good about seeing through that, but I failed this time. The looked great in photos. In pictures it was dated, dingy, and clearly needed a lot of work (I did look at disclosures before seeing it but that didn't help).

I would guess we looked at around 60 houses before we bought. It was very hard to find something in our area that met our criteria AND was priced right. We were looking for our forever house and didn't want to compromise. When we finally walked into "the one," it took us around 5 minutes to make an offer.

I think we looked at around 60 last time we bought as well. We were moving to a new area and made 2 house hunting trips. We hit 15 a day for 2 days, then came back and did the same. We kept bumping our price range up, because we couldn't find what we liked. Weedy Acres was the last one we saw on the last day (we were leaving town right after) and we decided with its glum interior but great potential that it was the one.

Your process sounds different, because you're there, know where you can likely find what you want, etc. I think you're being considerate of the realtor (and the sellers) by doing as much up-front elimination as possible. But I wouldn't feel obligated to pick one soon. This is a big investment and you need to make very sure you'll be happy with your choice. That's the way the game works, so keep doing what you're doing and don't feel guilty.

I don't care what is typical for other people or agents. I keep looking until I find the house/property that will work for our family. I would quickly drop an agent that tried to rush me into a house.

When searching for a home I also go to as many open houses as I can, in all price ranges. Think of it as continuing education! I think it makes me better at judging the quality and value of the houses we are interested in.

We must have looked at 75 houses before we bought this last house. We were looking for a specific type of house. (at least 100 years old. Bones of the house must be good, but we didn't care about the inside decor. We can paint, retile, put in flooring,etc.) We even stopped for a year, rented and then picked up again because we hadn't seen what we wanted. It is your decision, not the agents' on when,where, and what to buy. Take as long as you like and make sure you are happy with what you buy. NancyLouise

As sellers in a rural mountain area, we let our agents know ahead of time what it was like so they would not waste their time and ours bringing someone who did not like living out in the country--meaning 30 miles out of town, not 2 minutes. Sad to say we had 2 very bad agents until we wised up and used a local one that knew our area. The first person she brought bought it because she had been looking for quite awhile and had been given false information by our 2 bad agents.

Just to be clear - the agent has been fine and isn't trying to rush us at all. I was just curious what experience others have.

Ironically we saw our 6th house today and we are extremely interested in it. There are some things to check out, but it was the first house that I felt enthusiastic about. We had looked at a couple of other houses that were nice and possible but all had some real negatives. I was keeping them on the list but wouldn't be that upset if someone else came in and bought them. This house I like a lot more.

That said -- it isn't perfect either but it seems to meet all of our must have criteria and most of our nice to haves. We would need to do some work (replace kitchen counters, for example) but nothing that is a deal breaker. At the end it will likely work out to an economic decision. The price is a little high but not so high that it isn't worthwhile to try to see if we could work something out. Mostly I need to figure out what it would cost to do the work we would want to do and then see how it all shakes out.

As an agent, I can tell you, there is no "right number" of houses to see before you find the one you like. A good agent will be able to figure out pretty quickly what it is you are looking for and if your expectations are too big for your budget. Most of the buyers I take out put an offer in on something between 8 and 10 houses. I have only showed one buyer in excess of 60 houses and I would not do it again. He wasnt looking for anything special, just your average house. We did five home inspections and he always found something wrong, even when the inspectors didnt. He never used the same inspector twice. After the 5th one, I just stopped calling him. I just figured he was a looker, not really a buyer and I had wasted enough time on him.

It doesnt sound like you will be one of those types of lookers. You have found several that are contenders, just not quite right. You will find the right one soon.

To be clear, we didn't visit 60 houses with our realtor. More than half of the houses we saw were open houses we went to ourselves. But our realtor did show us close to 30 houses. We were afraid she wouldn't stick with us because it was taking us so long to find the right house, but it must have been clear to her that we were in fact serious buyers. It ended up paying off for her. We found the house we ultimately bought ourselves, but made sure she was brought in to get her commission.

Sorry for the double post. Don't know how that happened.

We must be weird. The first house we bought was the first one we looked at! This was in 1999 & pre doing vast searches online and after renting for years in a downtown environment we had just started driving around looking at different areas within an easy drive to work. We drove past one, saw the sign & stopped to write down some info. The listing agent happened to live next door and showed it to us. It was small & needed tons of reno but was CHEAP and we jumped on it. Loved that house once we finished! We lived there until we happened by another house in the area that we saw for sale & then bought IT without seeing any other houses. Then in 2008 we found our lake house online & bought that one without looking at any others too.

I'm not sure why we've been able to go in, see the changes we'd like to make in the first 15 minutes & just decide that it will work. We are 3 time purchasers of the first & only houses we looked at and have been incredibly happy with all 3!

When we bought our first house we only looked at three homes and ended up with a FSBO. We were looking for something in a rather small neighborhood and it was the best of the options.
Our second home was harder to find. We had more wants/needs this time (stickbuilt w/basement,3+bdrm, 2bath,shop,2-5 acres) and there was very little on the market that fit what we were looking for. We looked at nine properties before making an offer on the house we just purchased. From the time we viewed the first to the day we closed was almost exactly a year. So, even though we didn't look at many homes it was a rather long process and our agent was with us every step of the way. She listed and sold our first home over the summer and even found us a place to live while we endured a long drawn out Short Sale purchase.

We looked at about 12-15 houses over several visits, but we went under contract (with a contingency) on our current ski house sight unseen. We had owned a condo at the ski resort for several years, our daughter had also moved there about 3 years earlier, and we knew the neighborhoods well. When this listing popped up in late summer we didn't plan on being back out until Christmas and didn't want to make a special trip unless we could come to terms. We sent DD to look at the house and send us lots of pictures. She liked it, we liked what we saw, and the listing price was reasonable for the neighborhood, so we made an offer contingent on a 72 hour free look which would give us time to make a quick trip out and allow us to walk away with no questions asked. After a bit of negotiating we were under contract, with that contingency. I was chairing a charitable event that weekend, so only my husband could make the trip. He was even happier with the house than expected. We closed three weeks later.

OP, pets were important to us too and our only other contingency was prior POA approval of plans for a fence. It is a small POA and we complied with the POA design guidelines in our requested design, so the Seller was able to get the approval with no problem.

Linda, you said:
"Most of the buyers I take out put an offer in on something between 8 and 10 houses."

Wow! Are you in a super hot market where everything gets multiple offers?

When purchasing investmen propoerties I normally=ony look at that one.

When purchasing for my principal residence my wife does a lot of looking, then I look over the ones she finds at least acceptable.
She might look over 20-30, but it depends on what is available in areas we would consider living.
I have only declined about 4-5 per purchase.

Though a few I never got out of the car.

"Though a few I never got out of the car. "

My husband has done that a few times, especially when we were first looking for a condo. Our realtor didn't know what to think. By the time we looked for the house, he just sent daughter and me to look and told us if we found anything that interested us, he would go with us then. I think he ended up looking at two.

OP, pets were important to us too and our only other contingency was prior POA approval of plans for a fence. It is a small POA and we complied with the POA design guidelines in our requested design, so the Seller was able to get the approval with no problem.

The thing we run into is that the POA won't look at a fence plan from a prospective owner and if they approve a fence of the current owner then the approval isn't transferable to the new owner. I did look at restrictions and they are OK and I drove around the neighborhood and found a lot of houses with the type of fence we want to put in. I also plan to try to talk to someone on the ACC beforehand to at least have some idea of any potential issues. Not perfect, but since there are many fences in the subdivision that have the kind of fence we want it should be OK.

First house ...ONE!

Second house ... a 1-day marathon the day after an ice storm with 12-15 houses. After the first three, the agent had figured out which ones to skip.

Most recent house ... after a lot of research on Zillow, about 6 because there was a limited geo area. In one day. After the worst snowstorm in 20+ years.

This may be relative to the market.

First home - looked at 25+ and bid on about 7.
2nd - looked at 10 and frustrated and bought what I thought was acceptable but probably paid too much.
3rd - looked at 16 and bid on 3 with the one I obtained as my top choice but least likely to close because it was REO.

When I bought my current home, I looked at 9 houses. I lived nearby and had chosen the neighborhood I wanted. My agent showed me all 9 of the available homes in the neighborhood in one marathon day (of course, I took a notebook so I could keep them straight!). I went back to the one I now own for a second look and made an offer.

Most of the time (over 90%) my buyers make an offer on the third day after looking at between 20 and 24 homes.

Most of the time (over 90%) my buyers make an offer on the third day after looking at between 20 and 24 homes.

"Most of the buyers I take out put an offer in on something between 8 and 10 houses."

Wow! Are you in a super hot market where everything gets multiple offers?

Weedyacres, no, not at all. This is average. In a super hot market, offers were usually on the first or second house and I even had a few offers sight unseen. Seems like the majority of posters are right in line with my averages.

If people know what they want, its usually pretty easy to find the right house for them. My experience has been that people who look at many many houses dont really know what they want or they feel they need to see everything before deciding on something. THe other scenario is that they are from out of the area and are trying to get a feel for what each town offers for the money.

I talk to my clients. I dont show them every single house in a given price range. A little discussion and you can usually weed out their dislikes before wasting time visiting the house.

Oh, sorry Linda, I read your original message that they put offers in on 8 to 10 houses before they got one accepted. It sounds like you meant they view 8-10 houses before they put an offer in. That seems more reasonable. :-)

BTW, I like your approach where you do some pre-screening of houses. I had a realtor once (when I was relocating) that I gave my specifications to (spacious entry, big kitchen, big master suite) and he just lined up everything in my specified price range. I got frustrated walking into a house with a cramped entry and being able to cross it off without going any further. I asked him to screen better and he said it was impossible to know from the listing whether the details of the house matched my criteria. I think he was just lazy.

Glad to know there are some realtors out there that get to know the market offerings a bit better to screen out the obvious mismatches.