When I was moving my family from the Vail area back to Boulder, CO, I learned just how important Colorado real estate was to me.  On one level, there are the conversations we all have about the real estate market and its ups and downs. But on a deeper level, real estate is one of the most personal purchases most of us will ever make.  And although we work in tandem with other professionals who are there to help us get what we want, most of the onus is on the buyer; no one will care about your search as much as you will, and the end result won’t matter as much to anyone but you, either.

While I was searching the Boulder homes market, we were strapped for time. (We also had moved three times in 18 months, so finding a place where we wanted to stay a while was key.) We needed to move ASAP, but home inventory in Boulder was relatively low at that time.  I’m not a doctor or a psychologist, but I’m pretty sure that what I was feeling in the midst of it all was a lot of anxiety and maybe a little depression. Whenever I consider that most conversations about Colorado real estate are financial, I remember back to those times when real estate had a lot to do with my mental health.

While I owe a debt of gratitude to our Boulder REALTOR for doing us a good turn, I also thank my lucky stars that a big part of home buying today includes the use of technology that empowers the individual. This is often overlooked by those who don’t remember or who are too young to remember “the old days” of real estate, when luck played too big of a part in finding the right property, the right home.  While homebuyers still have to be largely self-reliant while home hunting, self-reliance has never been easier to embrace, or more results-oriented. What a relief.

What worked for me
I relied heavily on COhomefinder while looking to buy a Boulder home. In particular, I found that the following features were instrumental to our success.

• Signing up for HomeAlert and asking a client care coordinator for assistance when I needed it
• Finding the Boulder REALTOR that was right for us
• Using Google maps of Boulder houses to pre-screen locations we were or weren’t interested in
• Researching Boulder property values