We’re back.  After getting pre-approved, we had to figure out where we wanted to look for our new home.  The blue square on the map shows about where we live now.  The green square is where I have to get to for work.  You can see that I have a short commute.

We would have loved to buy a home near our current apartment.  But that’s where step 1 saved us a lot of time.  We could have looked around Sunnyvale until the cows came home, but we would have never found a place that was both big enough for us, and in our price range.

We decided to target the purple area of the map. This included Campbell and other southern San Jose neighborhoods of Cambrian and Willow Glen.  Since we had teamed up with a realtor who was recommended by our Mortgage guy, they helped us locate properties for us to look at on the weekends.  Some of the properties were open houses, and others were shown by appointment.

Our strategy was to begin looking at houses in January, which is the off season for real estate.  This would allow us to have a good foundational understanding of the market, so that we would be prepared for the onslaught of new inventory that we expect to come on the market this spring.

We also considered the chances of buying a foreclosure or bank owned property.