Looking for a new home for sale in Atlanta, Smyrna, East Cobb, or West Cobb in the current market?

You’re probably experiencing what most would-be home buyers are experiencing:

You can’t find a home for sale.  Or maybe when you do it has multiple offers or is gone in a day.

But don’t lose hope.  There are some great ways to find your next home even in the worst of Low Inventory markets.  We offer up some of our best tips here.

Some of these tips are more “outside the box” than others, but all of them have the potential to land you your next home.

Canvas the Area & Build Relationships

It might seem obvious:

Reaching out to people who live where you want to live is a great way to find unlisted sellers.  

In every neighborhood in Atlanta, Smyrna, East Cobb, and West Cobb there are people who are thinking of selling that just haven’t gotten around to putting a listing up.  Then there are others who might be selling in a few months.

Connecting with locals seems to intimidate many prospective buyers, but its effectiveness cannot be ignored.  Sending “snail mail”, making phone calls, and knocking on doors are all excellent strategies.

Visit the neighborhoods you’d like to live in and choose houses that you could see yourself living in and reach out to the owner.  It doesn’t matter which way you try to communicate, your message should be about the same.

Start by telling them a little about your family or why you are interested in moving to the area. Try to make a personal connection before you make an offer.  Tell them you are interested in their house and leave a way for them to connect with you.

This is a great way to build rapport with a potential seller or at the very least connect with a few neighborhood insiders.  These relationships often make the other strategies on this list more effective.

For example, diving deep into a neighborhood is a lot more effective when you already have a few friends in the area.

Take a Second Look at Expired, Withdrawn, & Overpriced Listings

One of the biggest keys to finding a home in low inventory markets is the willingness to exhaust all of your options.  From expired and withdrawn listings especially, you can often find hidden gems.  

Making connections with homeowners whose homes have recently come off the market gives you the chance to make the first offer on a potential price drop, or persuade them into one in the first place.

By looking into long expired or withdrawn listings, you might just run into a home that was overpriced before but no longer is.  There’s also the possibility you’ll find a few homes that simply weren’t marketed properly.

There are actually quite a few reasons why homes don’t sell.  It’s not always that they are a “bad buy”.

When you find such chances, you want to be quick to jump on them.  It would be a shame to open a potential seller’s eyes to the possibilities only to help someone else find the home of your dreams.

Don’t be afraid to leverage any new found area connections to get the scoop on unlisted homes.  

Understand that this method might not yield immediate results.  It all depends on your market. Do a good job of making connections and keeping in touch with them.  Then, you’ll often be one of the first to find out about newly listed properties.

Aside from this, the best place to hunt for homes that aren’t quite on the market is the internet.

Using the Web to Find Otherwise Unlisted Properties

If you’ve been looking for a home seriously, you already know that there is a ton of information about pieces of Real Estate online.

It’s pretty much the best place, for would be buyers, to find local MLS listings. Whether you use a large site like Realtor.com or the property database furnished by a local Real Estate Agent, you’ll find the same properties listed.

Just keep in mind, everyone has equal access to MLS listings.  That means competition is generally pretty high on these properties.  The real value of the Net (and all of these strategies) is the ability to find unlisted and newly listed homes first.

For quite awhile now, Craigslist has been a potential treasure trove for savvy real estate agents. Home buyers who are willing to check the service daily and do a little research on the listings they like might just stumble across their perfect fit.

Facebook is another powerful way to connect to the seller of your next home.  If you didn’t know, the world’s number one social media site has a sale group feature that people use to sell all sorts of things—homes included.

Then of course, you can always use social media to start building relationships with the communities you are looking to join.

Still, the best way to increase your chances of finding a home in any market is to find a Realtor you trust.

The Value in Hiring a Killer Agent

If you decided to take every piece of advice in this post and act on it yourself, it would probably overwhelm you.

For your local real estate agent, all of these things are in the job description.  At Total Atlanta Realty, we know the best ways to uncover Atlanta’s hidden gems.  In truth, it goes farther than the basic tips in this post.

We have a few things that the average home buyer simply doesn’t.

One of those things is home buying experience.  Nothing is a good substitute for going through the process.  And when you go through it over and over, you come to understand how to facilitate smooth transitions in any situation.

Another big advantage that seasoned Realtors have, is a network of industry contacts that they are able to leverage to find the right home for you.  Even in real estate, “It’s not what you know but who you know,” as they say.

If you’re serious about finding homes for sale in Atlanta, Smyrna, East Cobb and West Cobb in a low inventory market, hiring a real estate agent you can trust is probably the number one most important decision you can make.

Feel like you’re more likely to find the right new home for you after reading this post, despite low inventory?  Please like and share on your favorite social media networds to spread the knowledge.  

Or, if you have a question or comment, please leave it in the comments section below.

The post How to Find Homes for Sale in a Low Inventory Market appeared first on Total Atlanta Realty.