Reviving the House Hunt Series

There are quite a few of you out there who have written to me recently asking for recommendations of ready-to-move in properties. As a buyer, this “find-a-new-home” project is one that sucks the time, energy and miles out of home chasers, testing their patience and perseverance, and proves as an acid test to see if the money they have been saving for their dream home will be sufficient.

And, people who are in the house hunting process will agree with me when I say that even the most amicable couples end up having long drawn arguments over the kind of house and interiors they both like.

Your e-mails have motivated me to revive the “House Hunt” series again in the pursuit of your dream home. And when someone says my analysis has helped them zero in on a property, it brings me immense pleasure. As it has always been, these posts will be reviewed objectively keeping these parameters in mind (in this order): location & price, and plan.  Bring kids into mix and the search dimension narrows further what with schools in the vicinity, play area, proximity to classes and such.

Even though we moved into our home two years ago, I have continued to visit upcoming apartments and villas. Why? Because as an interior and home decor blogger by choice, I believe in keeping myself aware of what luxury projects are in the market from developers such as Lodha, the current interior trends, general structure of the houses, layout, and then analyze what works and what does not. For instance, there is a great emphasis now on the flow of natural light among new projects complemented by a facade with clean lines, huge glass windows and double height living rooms.

Here are a few tips to make your search easier:

If you look at the parameters, I mentioned location and price equally, because both are equally important. There is no point buying a sprawling 3000 sq.ft villa for 80 Lakhs on the outskirts of a city if you are going to spend three hours on the road every day.

1. Location: if you cannot compromise on location, then you will have to raise the ceiling on price unless you are lucky to find one within your budget. And this is something I often find families doing, over leveraging themselves to move into a space they loved at first sight.
2. Price: Price scores a tad higher than location in my experience. Are you wondering how to finalize a budget? Look at how much you can pay towards down payment or the cash component from your savings. To be conservative, plan for 40% down payment and 60% coming from the loan. Write to me if you want to understand the math behind this conservative process.

On that note, let’s draw inspiration from some well-designed spaces to keep us motivated in our search.

If you’re distraught about not finding your dream home yet, this nugget of wisdom from Seth Godin may put it in perspective.

We each carry around a frying pan, looking for just the right size fish to fry. We each have an expectation of what we’ve got, what we might get and what we deserve. And most of all, we each carry around limits, beliefs about what we’re able to contribute.

Image courtesy:

Jungalow Rest of the pictures: Lodha