The Real Buyer's Guide · Section Six
Everyone hands you a two-column worksheet. It doesn’t survive the first house you fall for. Here’s a frame that does.
You write “need: three bedrooms” and “want: big yard.” Then you walk into a two-bedroom with a beautiful yard on a street you love, and the list is useless — because standing in a room, everything feels like a need.
The columns are the problem. Wants and needs are about how strongly you feel, and feelings move. You need a test that doesn’t.
Sort every item on your list into things you can change after you own it and things you are stuck with. That line doesn’t move when you’re excited.
| Changeable | Permanent |
|---|---|
| Paint, flooring, fixtures, cabinets | The location, and everything about it |
| Kitchens and bathrooms, with money | The lot — size, slope, orientation |
| Landscaping, fence, shed | Whether it backs a road, a field, or a neighbour |
| Appliances, light fixtures, hardware | Ceiling height, window placement, natural light |
| Adding a room, sometimes | The commute |
| Almost anything cosmetic | Which schools it feeds, and what’s next door |
Ugly is cheap to fix. Location is not fixable at any price. Buyers who reject a sound house over its carpet, then compromise on the street, have it exactly backwards.
Anything in the permanent column is where your real requirements live. Anything in the changeable column is a negotiating point — and often a discount, because most buyers won’t see past it.
Each thing you make non-negotiable shrinks the pool of houses and, usually, raises what you’ll pay for what’s left. That’s not a reason to have no standards. It’s a reason to know what each one is costing you.
Ask, item by item: would I pay fifteen thousand dollars for this? Some answers will surprise you. A third garage bay might survive that test. A specific countertop material almost never does.
When your list and your budget disagree, one of them has to move — and it’s better to decide which in advance than at eleven o’clock on a Sunday with an offer deadline.
Do this separately. Both of you write your own list, sort it into changeable and permanent, and pick your top three permanents. Then compare.
Two things fall out of that, and both are worth the twenty minutes:
If you can’t agree on three permanents between you, you aren’t ready to shop yet. That’s not a criticism — it’s much cheaper to find out now.
Listing photography is taken by professionals paid to make a house look its best, and I say that as someone who shoots his own. Photos are honest about layout and finish. They are silent about everything below.
Drive past at night, and again on a weekday morning. A house you saw once at eleven on a Saturday is a house you haven’t actually seen.
These are the ones people moving here don’t know to ask, and they belong on your permanent list because none of them can be changed after closing.
Ask me any of these about a specific address and I’ll tell you what I know or find out. I grew up in Grantsville — some of this I can answer from the driveway.
Write it before you shop, because shopping without one is how people buy the third house they see. But hold it loosely.
After five houses, sit down and re-rank it. You will have learned something you couldn’t have known from a spreadsheet — that the open floor plan you insisted on feels loud, or that the extra bedroom matters more than the garage. That’s the list working, not failing.
What shouldn’t move much is the permanent column. If that’s changing every week, the real problem is usually the budget, and it’s worth going back to Section One.
There’s a worksheet for this. Print the Home Search Worksheet and do it with a pen — it walks through the sort, the three permanents, the fifteen-thousand-dollar test, and the Tooele questions, with room to write. If you’re buying with someone, print two and fill them in separately before you compare. Fifteen minutes, and it’s the difference between a list and a wish.
Cecil Hawthorne, REALTOR® · Utah License #319617-SA00 · Sun Key Realty LLC · 801-870-6509 · cecil.hawthorne.realtor@gmail.com
General information about the home buying process, not legal, tax or inspection advice. Property characteristics including water rights, septic systems, HOA obligations and planned nearby development must be verified independently through the county, the relevant utility or district, and a licensed inspector before you rely on them. Nothing here is a representation about any specific property.