How to plan a day of house viewings

How many to book

There is no correct number, but there is a real constraint, and it is attention rather than time. Whatever you book, the last house of the day gets the worst of your attention and the one straight after lunch gets the second worst. Plan around that instead of trying to beat it.

• Four to six in a day is a common shape for a Saturday in the GTA, and what caps it is usually travel time rather than stamina.
• If there is one place you are serious about, do not put it last. Put it second or third, while you are warmed up and not yet tired.
• Leave one slot unbooked. Something will run long, or you will want twenty more minutes somewhere, and a day with no slack becomes a day of apologies.

Group by geography, not by preference

The most common planning mistake is ordering the day by how much you like the listings. Order it by the map.

• Cluster the day into two or three areas and finish one before moving to the next.
• Look up travel time for the actual time of day on the actual day, not the off peak estimate. Crossing the city, or getting onto a highway at the wrong hour, can cost forty minutes.
• Check parking before you arrive, particularly downtown and in the older neighbourhoods with permit only streets.
• If you are on transit, plan the walk at both ends. A listing's distance to a station is a straight line. The walk is not.

Booking the showings

• Your realtor books private showings, and how much notice is needed depends on the seller. A day or two is normal. Same day is sometimes possible and sometimes not.
• A tenanted unit needs proper written notice under Ontario's residential tenancy rules before anyone can enter, so those showings are the least flexible. Put them in the plan early rather than adding them the night before.
• Open houses need no booking and are a good first look at a street or a building, but you are sharing the space and you will not get a quiet twenty minutes.
• Send your realtor the day as one list, not as five messages across two days. This is where a shared board earns its keep: the shortlist is already in one place and already has the addresses on it.

What to bring

• A charged phone, for photos and notes.
• A tape measure. One piece of furniture is going to decide something.
• A flashlight, for the basement and any hatch nobody has opened this year.
• The shortlist, with the questions you already have for each place written beside it.
• Water and something to eat. This sounds trivial until the fifth house.

The viewing checklist covers what to actually look at once you are inside.

The two minutes between houses

This is the part of the day that decides whether any of the rest was worth doing. Before you drive to the next one, while you are still parked outside this one, write four things.

1. One sentence on the best thing about it.
2. One sentence on the thing you would have to live with.
3. A number out of ten, decided now rather than later.
4. Any question you want answered, written as a question, so it can go to your realtor exactly as it is.

Four lines. It takes less time than the group chat message you were going to send instead, and unlike that message it is still findable next week.

Rank them the same evening

Put the day's houses in order before you sleep, while the rooms are still distinct. If two of them tie, name what you would need to know to break the tie, and that becomes the first thing you ask on Monday. A ranking written a week later is a ranking of the photos, not of the houses.

Common questions

How many houses can I see in one day?

Travel time usually decides this before stamina does. Four to six is a common Saturday in the GTA if they are clustered. Two clusters at opposite ends of the region will cut that roughly in half.

Should I go to open houses or book private showings?

Both, for different jobs. An open house is a cheap way to learn a street, a building or a housing type with no commitment. A private showing is what you want once a place is a real candidate, because you get the time and the quiet to look properly.

Do I need my realtor at every showing?

For a private showing they arrange it and normally attend. You can go to an open house alone, and it is worth telling the agent hosting it that you are already working with a realtor.

What if I want to see a place again?

Second viewings are normal and usually more useful than a fifth first viewing. Go at a different time of day and bring your question list rather than a general good feeling.