Searching for the perfect place

Here’s a simple piece of advice: Take your time. Listen to someone who bought five years ago, when the market was hot. With housing prices rising like bread dough, I should have been frantic to grab the first place that looked roughly okay. Instead, I played it cool, man, real cool. Each place I saw was a revelation by negation: Ew, no outdoor space of any kind! Yuck, it’s right next to a school! My agent (I call her Saint Lisa) listened to me eliminate, get ready for it, 28 places. She learned from each no and became increasingly selective about what she showed me as my dream place came into focus. After all that searching, I knew within minutes when I’d found it. You could call it love at first sight, but it’s more accurate to say that at that point, I fully understood what I really wanted and needed in a home, so much so that I put in an offer that afternoon. Five years of blissful living later, I can say that those 28 nos were time well spent.

—Hank Sartin