Buying a home is a big task. It can be overwhelming at times. One way to simplify the process and organize your thoughts in a list. I tried to find the perfect app to help make it easier to remember the houses we were looking at. However, nothing was a good fit so we resorted to an “old fashioned” pen and paper list. When we were purchasing our home, our family sat down and made a list with the following categories:

MUST Haves

DEAL Breakers

WISH List (Bonus items)

MINUS (Non-deal breaker negatives)

Our list looked like this:

MUST Haves:

• At least 3 bedrooms
• At least 2 bathrooms
• Updated Kitchen
• Updated Bathroom

DEAL Breakers:

• Creepy Basement
• Outdated electrical system

WISH List:

• Garage
• Fenced Yard
• Updated Exterior

MINUS

• Small lot
• Really close neighbors
• Outdated utilities

After writing our list, we numbered each house and took a copy of our list to have an easy way to remember the big items for each one. It really helped with our search and we were surprised when we found our house, how it match our list. Of course it did not match perfectly, no house can ever be PERFECT, but it helped find the one that was right for us.

What does your list look like?