Finding the right home that fits your criteria and budget is one of the biggest pain points for most home buyers. Perhaps having an extra bedroom is a non-negotiable, but an additional bathroom is also great. Will the wishlist of features all fit within your budget? That’s where our new tool, Price Perfect, can help.
We assembled a team at realtor.com with a straightforward goal — help home buyers zoom in on their ideal home, within their affordable price range, in their neighborhood of choice. Using this tool powered by live listing data, home buyers can understand the average market rate for each home feature and adjust their target home criteria based on the features they value the most to fit within their budget.
After entering a basic search of bedrooms, bathrooms and location, you are able to view how much adding or subtracting specific features would impact the price of your home and adjust your search accordingly. For example, when searching for a three-bedroom, two-bathroom home in Madison, Wis., the cost of expanding the search to include another bedroom would add $62,500 and another bathroom $24,045 to the median listing price of $369,900. However, subtracting a bathroom could save you $10,000, and considering a condo instead of a single family home could save another $5,000 off the median listing price.
Once you decide on your desired features, Price Perfect will give you an idea of the monthly cost for the median-priced home broken down by mortgage, property taxes and insurance. With a quick click of the “See Homes” button, you can view all the homes on realtor.com that meet all of your specific search criteria.
Price Perfect assigns costs to individual home features based on an algorithm of listing prices and characteristics of homes currently on the market in a specific neighborhood. This ensures costs reflect market conditions in real time, making these insights incredibly relevant to home buyers currently in the market.
Identifying your needs versus wants is an important step in the home-buying process. Even more essential is taking that list and selecting what criteria are realistic must-haves and knowing what those features will cost. Hearing consumers say during our user research phase “I hadn’t thought about this approach before, but this is the way to do it,” was exciting. Solving for the key pain point simply and elegantly was the priority.
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Chungmeng Cheong, realtor.com chief product officer, said of the tool, “Home shoppers are juggling and trading off many factors in search of their next home… lot size, bedrooms, commute, etc. However, there isn’t a good way for them to explore different decisions and see how that changes the homes available for sale or the price they may have to pay. Our mortgage team co-created, with our users, a first-in-the-industry what if tool that lets users explore what they value by putting an average price tag on specific home features.”
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Going into the home-buying journey knowing exactly what you want and what you can afford not only makes you a more prepared and confident home buyer, but also shows your real estate professional that you know your buying power and are that much more committed to buying. Perhaps you have learned that an upgraded kitchen in your search area adds $58,000 to the listing price and you would prefer to in fact have that additional bathroom instead. With this knowledge, your real estate professional is better-equipped to help you find the right home and you are one step closer to buying it.
I invite you to explore Price Perfect and see how it enables a smarter home search with an understanding of what home features you want truly cost. Check your readiness, know your buying power, and be confident in your home buying journey.
Realtor.com’s Price Perfect tool is available on mobile web and the realtor.com website. Keep an eye out for its expansion on realtor.com’s iOS and Android app.