Looking for a house is supposed to be fun. But when the temperatures soar in the summer hitting the Waterloo Region house hunting trail with your Realtor can quickly leave you wondering why you didn’t get this all done in January (oh yeah, all that snow..)
Don’t let a bit of heat and a good old-fashioned Ontario summer day ruin your plans to go looking for that brand new KW home! We’ve done more than a few seasons in the sun now as Waterloo Region real estate agents, so we do have some tried and tested summer house-hunting wisdom to share.
Looking for a home can be scheduled when it’s (relatively) cool
Try to schedule house hunting trips with your agent either in the earlier morning hours or in the evening. It may be easier to pop out of the office at lunchtime in some ways but it may a hot, rather miserable trip.
Better still pick a weekend day and plan to get an earlier start as your Realtor will agree to. And as we real estate agents are also humans, and humans that suffer in the heat too, most of us really don’t mind an 8 am Saturday start if it means we can be back in air-conditioned office by the time the afternoon heat really begins to hit.
An alternative idea? Set up a few early evening showings. That way you’ll get the added bonus of being able to see properties at dusk – when both a home and an area can look rather different than they do during the day – and a good excuse to go out for a nice dinner once you are done..
Try to leave the kids at home
It’s natural to want to involve your kids in the house hunting process, especially if they are a little older. Most kids and trailing around in the heat don’t mix well together, however, so if at all possible leave them with a sitter for the duration of the day’s house hunt. If you do find a property (or properties) you really like you can then take them for a look on a different day, at a cooler time, when you have fewer stops to make.
Map out homes that are close to one another
On a hot day, you need to have a very clear plan of which homes you will visit within a certain area. Move quickly down the list of homes near one another so you can prevent your car – and yourself – from overheating.
Ask your agent to map out visits to four or five homes that are a reasonable distance away from one another. That may mean an extra day of viewings but it’s better than trying to struggle through a marathon home hunt when you are so hot and tired you are practically ready to drop – and certainly not really in the mood to take in all the details you should when viewing homes for sale.
Carry a fan and bottled water
Although most of the homes you visit are likely to have AC, and hopefully your car will too, there will still be times when you have no choice but face the heat head-on and a fan (even a simple hand fan) and a couple of bottles of water can be real lifesavers.