[quote=Scarlett]Unless the OP is intimately familiar with the area, i.e. rented in the area for a couple years at least, he or she needs to get familiar with it, and that simply doesn’t happen overnight, it takes a few months – AT LEAST. It’s not a set number, true. They will know when they will become familiar enough.
Depends how much time they have on their hands too. With a young child, they may not have that much. And you need to take breaks, or weekends off for other things. And how intensive their search is.
I am still learning new things about PQ. And I’ve been looking actively in there total of more than 12 months – with breaks in between.[/quote]
Totally agree with this.
We’ve been very actively watching the market for over a decade — on the street, actively looking at homes — but there are still areas we’re not familiar enough with (as evidenced in another recent thread).
It takes a long time to understand a particular market, and it’s only after really studying an area that one can know if a listing is a good deal or not. I’ve seen so many out-of-towners fly into SD after doing an internet search, and they almost always overpay for a house that’s been on-and-off the market for months or years without any buyer activity. Then, a year or more later, when they have to sell again (who are these people who insist on buying for only a short time???), they are “shocked” that they can’t fetch the same price they paid for their shacks.
