Home search

Write the brief before you open the filters

Most searches start with a price range and a bedroom count, and then run for months without ever getting clearer. The filters are good at narrowing a list. They cannot tell you which of the remaining homes suits the way you actually live.

Before you search, write down the parts of your week that the home has to support. The trip you make every weekday morning. The people who visit and where they sleep. The parking you need. The stairs you are willing to climb in fifteen years. Whether you work at home, and what that needs in floor space and quiet.

Then split that list into two columns. One column is what the property itself has to provide, because no amount of money or renovation will change it: the lot, the orientation, the street, the school catchment, the distance to the SkyTrain station. The other column is what can change later: paint, kitchens, flooring, bathrooms, landscaping.

A search built on the first column stays useful for months. A search built on the second column rules out good homes over things a trade could fix in a week.

• The commute, measured at the hour you actually travel, not at midday
• The lot: size, slope, orientation, and what sits behind and beside it
• Parking, and whether a second vehicle or a trailer has somewhere to go
• Stairs, bathroom locations, and single-level living if that matters over time
• Noise: arterial roads, rail, flight paths, and commercial neighbours
• What you would have to give up to get each item on the list

What a listing tells you, and what it does not

A listing is written by the seller's brokerage to attract buyers. That does not make it wrong, and most of the numbers in it come from public records. It does mean the listing decides what to include, and the parts left out are often the parts that change a decision.

The measurements are a common example. Floor area on a listing may come from a measurement service, from a building plan, from the assessment record, or from the owner. Those four sources disagree with each other regularly, and they count basements, garages and enclosed patios differently. If the price per square foot matters to your comparison, find out which source produced the number before you build anything on it.

Age is another. A home described by its original build year may have been rewired, reroofed and replumbed since, or may have had none of that done. The build year and the condition of the systems are separate questions, and only one of them is on the listing.

The fields that are reliable are the ones tied to a registry: the legal description, the lot dimensions on title, the tax assessment, and the strata plan number where there is one. Those you can check against the source. Treat the rest as a starting question.

• Ask which source produced the floor area, and whether it includes below-grade space
• Separate the build year from the age of the roof, furnace, hot water tank and electrical panel
• Check the lot dimensions against title rather than the listing summary
• Look for what is absent: no basement photos, no mechanical room, no rear yard
• Read the remarks for conditions the seller has already set, such as a required completion date

The MLS number and the brokerage on every home

Every home on this site carries two pieces of attribution: its MLS number and the full name of the brokerage that holds the listing. Those are not decoration. Showing MLS data to the public comes with a condition that the listing brokerage is credited, and the MLS number is the only identifier that reliably points at one specific listing.

They are also useful to you. The MLS number is what you quote when you ask a question about a home, and it removes the guesswork that comes from two homes on the same street or a unit number that was typed wrong. The brokerage name tells you who to expect on the other side of an offer, and whether the same firm is on both sides of the transaction.

When you send an enquiry, lead with the MLS number. It saves a round of messages working out which property you mean.

The questions a listing cannot answer

Each property type carries its own set of documents, and none of them appear in a listing. For a strata unit, the information that changes the decision sits in the minutes, the depreciation report, the contingency reserve fund balance, the bylaws and the Form B. For a detached house, it sits in the municipal permit history, the title search, and the record of whether an oil tank was ever buried on the lot.

These are the questions worth asking early, because the answers take time to arrive and some of them end a search. A strata that has voted down a roof replacement three years running, a house with an addition that never received a final inspection, a lot with a registered right of way across the back: each one is knowable before you write an offer, and each one is invisible on a listing page.

Write your questions down per property, rather than keeping them in your head. By the fourth viewing the homes blur together, and the question you meant to ask about the crawl space is the one you forget.

• Strata: minutes for the last two years, depreciation report, contingency reserve fund balance, bylaws, Form B
• Detached: permit history for additions and suites, title search for charges and rights of way, oil tank search
• Any home: the age and service record of the roof, furnace, hot water tank and electrical service
• The survey question: where do the buildings actually sit relative to the lot lines
• What is planned nearby, from the municipality rather than from the neighbours

Reading a strata depreciation report Oil tank searches and buried tanks in BC Survey certificate or title insurance

Booking viewings so the comparison holds

Two homes seen a week apart are almost impossible to compare. The one you saw most recently wins, because it is the one you remember in detail. Book viewings in groups of three or four on the same day, in the same part of the day, and the differences become obvious instead of arguable.

Take the same three photographs in every home: the electrical panel, the mechanical room, and the view from the main bedroom window. The first two tell you what you are buying underneath the paint. The third is the one people regret not checking.

Go back to the shortlist at a different hour. A street that is quiet at eleven on a Saturday can carry commuter traffic at eight on a Tuesday, and a south-facing room that looks bright at midday may sit in shadow by three in the winter.

• Three or four homes per outing, same part of the day
• The same photographs in each one, so the comparison is on the same terms
• A second visit to the shortlist at a different hour and, if you can, on a weekday
• Notes written in the car before the next viewing, not that evening

What to check at a home viewing

When the search becomes an offer

The point where a search turns into a transaction is where the rules change. From the moment you are talking about price and terms on a specific property, the question of who represents you stops being theoretical. In British Columbia a licensee dealing with you has to hand you a Disclosure of Representation in Trading Services form and go through it before providing trading services, and at an open house that obligation starts as soon as confidential information is asked for or offered.

The practical consequence is simple. Until you know whether the person you are speaking to represents you or represents the seller, do not tell them your maximum price, your motivation, or how soon you have to move.

How buyer representation works Prepare for the search