Buying a Luxury Home

The Bend Real Estate Market changes when it comes to luxury real estate. When buying a luxury home you will be investing a lot more money than the typical home purchase. Needless to say, you will want to do your homework before making such a large investment to make sure it is the right property for you and your family. Hopefully this article, along with working with one of our Bend Premier Luxury Brokers, will give you peace of mind in the luxury home buying process.

What is a luxury Home?

Luxury Home in Bend, OregonGenerally speaking, a luxury home is defined as being valued in the top 10% of the local market. However, luxury homes should also be unique to other homes in that they provide for a more luxurious lifestyle thanks to a number of factors, such as: 1) Location: Luxury homes are often built in the most desirable locations, such as along a river or high on hills offering amazing views, 2) Materials: You often hear the term "high-end finishes" when referring to the luxury home market, 3) Design: Places in Bend like Tetherow are known for having some of the most impressive and unique architecture in the country, 4) Size: Although this trend may be changing, high-end homes are generally much bigger than traditional homes, 5) Amenities: When it comes to luxurious houses in Bend, you can often find luxurious amenities such as an indoor pool, tennis court, dock, rock climbing wall, amazing home theaters, huge wine cellars, maid quarters, and sprawling grounds, and 6) Prestige: Just living on the west-side of Bend adds $$$ to the price of the home, but so might homes with historical value, built by a famous architect, or owned by a celebrity.

Now that we have discussed the characteristics of a luxury home, here are some tips when it comes to buying a luxury home:

Look Beyond the Photos

When you start your home search, you will likely be as 97% of all home buyers and search online with photos of the home being the most useful feature followed by the home description. Clicking through the photos can quickly give you a good way to compare different properties. However, there are a couple of reasons why you need to look beyond the photos when dealing with luxury homes.

• First: High end homes can be so large that it is difficult to translate into a 2-dimensional photograph. Sometimes the old adage that "the pictures just don't do it justice" can actually be true. Bend Premier Real Estate recently represented a luxury home on the Deschutes River where it was impossible to capture the vastness and impressiveness of its 7729 square foot single-level living. Doing a Matterport 3D Tour certainly helped, but still fell quite a bit short. It wasn't until the home buyers actually visited the home that they fell in love with this amazing place.
• Second: This may seem a bit contradictory to the caution above, but with luxury homes you also want to be careful not to fall in love with a property based on the photos before you visit in person. Luxury home sellers will typically only allow a top real estate photographer to shoot their property. But even the best photographers will not wait for that perfect sunset sky to happen that you see in that main photo that caught your eye... that was done in Photoshop. And a good photographer will frame only the best images of the home and likely not include less desirable features.
  If a home otherwise meets your criteria, don't dismiss it based entirely on the photos, especially if you are comparing it to the "wow" experience of the one with the fake sunset. Many large homes aren't photogenic that way and require an in-person visit to really appreciate.

Establish Your Criteria in Advance

When looking at luxury real estate, it is easy to get carried away emotionally but forget about what was really important to you and your family. The home may have a jaw dropping view of the Three Sisters, but what about that extra bedroom you really needed? A common method of dealing with this is to write down a list of what you need, what you want, and what you could go either way on. Remember, this goes beyond the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, but also includes the other characteristics of a luxury home such as location, design (e.g., some people only want to look at modern design homes), and amenities (e.g., must have an indoor pool for exercise). This list will become very useful for both you and your Bend Premier Broker in finding you and your family the best available home.

Work with a Bend Premier Luxury Broker

It's critical to have a good buyer's agent that is both knowledgeable and experienced in the area you want to buy. Beyond that, it's best to have an agent who has vast experience in luxury real estate and who is well connected with other luxury real estate agents. They will already have a good understanding not only what is currently on the market, but also what might be coming soon or is currently "off market" but might be available for sale. A good luxury agent also knows the ins-and-outs of the purchasing a luxury property and can be your best resource in giving you the knowledge you need to making an informed decision. Bend Premier Real Estate has a number of highly qualified luxury agents with decades of experience who are also recognized as top agents by Who's Who in Luxury Real Estate. For more information on these brokers, give our owner and Managing Principal Broker Lynnea Miller a call at (541) 771-6390.

Be Patient in Your Search

With luxury properties, things tend to move more slowly as there are fewer buyers than you will find in traditional housing. This can actually work in your favor; with an investment of this size, you and your Bend Premier Luxury Agent really need to do your homework in order to find the best home for you and your family. And, with fewer buyers, you will usually have more time to negotiate the best deal. We cannot emphasize enough that when you do your research, make sure you take enough time to not only look at the home itself, but also what is going on in the area around the home. You may have an amazing view today, but depending upon what is going on nearby the view could be gone or partially blocked in the future. And the same would go for odors caused by such future developments as cannabis operations where there have been many lawsuits in Oregon and surrounding states.

Don't Overextend Yourself

Just like with traditional housing, it's important not to overextend yourself financially when purchasing a luxury home. There are amazing luxury homes in Bend, and it is easy to forget every practical consideration you had going in to the process. Like any luxury purchase, it can be easy to end up with buyer's remorse if you are not careful and take your time, especially if you forget to take into account the high cost of maintenance and how much furniture at large house will need after the purchase. It's important that you are realistic about both the house you are looking for and how much you are willing to spend.

Final Thoughts

Buying a luxury home can be an emotional roller coaster. It is not just a major financial investment, but a heartfelt one as well as you are selecting a place to rest, spend family time, create memories, and grow older. It is easy to get buyers remorse if one gets lost in the emotional aspect of a home purchase. More than ever, it's important to have an experienced luxury real estate agent to be your ally and provide the process, knowledge, and experience to help you have confidence in your decisions and happy with the results.