Buying a house sight unseen: A step-by-step guide

Buying a house is a major commitment, so it’s important to do your due diligence before diving in. A lot of that due diligence involves inspecting the house yourself, taking stock of the neighborhood, and getting a sense for how the house feels. That requires being there in person, but in some cases, you might find yourself in a situation where getting to the house you want to buy can be difficult.

Buying a house sight unseen can be tricky, but it’s becoming more popular. Things like virtual tours are becoming more common since the COVID-19 pandemic, with 60% of buyers saying that they’d be willing to buy a home after a virtual tour only. If you’re thinking about buying a home sight unseen, use these tips.

What does it mean to buy a house sight unseen?

Buying a house sight unseen doesn’t literally mean that the buyer has never seen the house or what it looks like. It means purchasing a home you have never been to or seen in person.

Even without going to see a home personally, there are ways you can see what a house is like, such as virtual video tours, online photos with the listing, and interactive 3D tours. These tools can give you a good sense of what a house looks like even without having to visit it yourself.

Steps to buying a house sight unseen

If you want to buy a home sight unseen, you’ll need to add a few steps to the typical home buying process.

Step 1: Choose a good real estate agent

Getting a good agent is important whenever you’re shopping for a home, but it becomes absolutely essential if you’re buying a home remotely. On top of guiding your search and helping with negotiations, your agent will be your eyes and ears on the ground, giving you information about properties you’ll never get to see in person.

On top of the normal vetting process you’d use for a real estate agent, you’ll want to ask some questions about how they work with buyers who want to buy sight unseen. Ask about their experience with other sight unseen sales, what tools they use to show buyers homes remotely, and any tips they may have to help you.

Step 2: Get preapproved for your mortgage

The next step in the process is to get preapproved for a mortgage. This involves submitting an application and some financial documents to the lender of your choice. The lender reviews your application and vets the information you provide.

If you get preapproved, the lender will give you a letter stating how much you can borrow, giving you a sense of how much home you can afford. That letter is what makes preapproval different from prequalification, which does not involve as much financial investigation.

Preapproval makes your offers more appealing to sellers because it indicates that you have a very good chance of qualifying for a loan.

Step 3: Take a virtual tour of the property

Once your agent locates a home that might interest you, the typical next step would be to take a tour of the home. Since you’re buying sight unseen, you can’t visit the home yourself, so you’ll want to take a virtual tour.

There are a few ways to do this, such as by having your agent get on a FaceTime or Zoom call with you as they walk through the home or uploading a video walkthrough to YouTube or via text message.

You can also use virtual tour options, which the seller’s agent may have set up. There are a few different types of virtual tours.

• Full walk-through. These tours are videos showing each room of the home, often with an agent narrating their walkthrough and each room’s features.
• 3-D room tours. These let you interact with a virtual model of the home, rotating and viewing each room and the home as a whole so you can get a closer look at specific aspects of the property. Keep in mind these are virtual models, so they don’t perfectly reflect the home.
• Interactive 360-degree virtual tour. Like a 3-D room tour, these let you interact with the model and move, zoom, or rotate to get a good sense of each room. However, they use real photos to provide a more realistic look at each room.

Step 4: Make a sight unseen offer

If you find a property that you like, the next step is to make an offer to purchase it. Here, you’ll want to rely on your agent to walk you through the process, but it typically looks something like this.

1. Let your agent know you want to make an offer
2. Have your agent look at nearby comps and help you determine a good price
3. Decide on any contingencies to include, such as an inspection contingency
4. Draft your offer letter
5. Submit the letter with earnest money

Be ready to negotiate with the seller. You may need to send updated offers throughout the negotiation process.

Step 5: Get a thorough home inspection

A home inspection is a good idea whenever you’re buying a home, but like a good agent, a good inspection is even more crucial when you’re buying a home sight unseen. You don’t have the opportunity to examine the home in person, so you’re relying on the inspector to find potential issues like:

• Cracks or problems in the foundation
• Roof leaks
• Issues with the heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) system
• Plumbing clogs
• Water pressure
• Peeling paint
• Inoperable fixtures in the sinks, showers
• Problems with exhaust fans
• Drainage issues
• Uneven doors or windows

Your inspector can note these problems and help you estimate the cost to fix them. Depending on the severity of the issues, you may want to decide against moving forward with the purchase.

Step 6: Close on the home

Closing is the final step in the process of buying a home. You typically sit down with a lawyer and go through the paperwork that finalizes the sale and your mortgage. This is when you have to pay closing costs, such as loan origination fees.

Depending on where you’re buying, you may do the closing remotely, meaning you don’t have to go to a lawyer’s office to fill out the paperwork.

Should I buy a house sight unseen?

Seeing your potential future home in person is one of the best ways to decide whether it’s the right home for you, but there isn’t anything that’s wrong with buying a home sight unseen. In fact, it’s becoming even more popular these days, with almost 40% of millennials saying they’d be willing to buy a home they’d only seen virtually.

There are a few situations where buying a home sight unseen makes sense. For example, if you’re moving cross-country, it would be hard to view homes in person. You might also go out of town only to find that a hot property that fits your wants to a T has hit the market.

Pros and cons of buying a house sight unseen

Buying a home sight unseen might help you buy a home more quickly, especially if you’re buying far from where you live, but keep the pitfalls in mind.

Pros

These are some of the perks of buying a home sight unseen.

• Save on travel costs and time off work: If you’re buying a home far from where you live, you may not have the time or the funds to travel every time you want to look at a home in person.
• Tour more homes, more quickly: In-person tours can take a long time. Just scheduling the tour and getting to the home can be an annoying process. With virtual tours, you can look at dozens of homes in just an hour or two without leaving your home.
• Expedite the time between listing and offer: Sometimes, homes get listed, but tours aren’t possible for a day or so after the home hits the market. With a virtual tour and sight-unseen offer, you may be able to make an offer more quickly than the competition.

Cons

Before you buy a home sight unseen, consider these drawbacks.

• You may miss problems with the home: If you’re buying a home sight unseen, you’re completely reliant on your agent and inspector to notice issues. You might buy a home that requires expensive repairs.
• You can’t get a sense of traffic near the home: Traveling to the home, driving in the area, and trying to find parking all give you a sense of what traffic in the area is like. You could wind up buying a home that is surrounded by gridlocked traffic without knowing until it’s too late.
• You can’t get a feel for the neighborhood: The area around your home and the feel of the neighborhood are very important to the quality of a home. Without visiting the home in person, you may wind up buying a property in a rough neighborhood or one that you simply don’t vibe with.

The bottom line: To buy a house sight unseen, you’ll need a top-notch real estate agent

Buying a home sight unseen comes with some major pitfalls. After all, it’s hard to replace the opportunity to visit a home and see it with your own two eyes. Still, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible or even necessarily a bad idea. As long as you accept the potential downsides and have a stellar realtor and inspector, you can succeed at buying a home sight unseen.

If you need help finding that all-star real estate agent, Rocket Mortgage can help.