So this video is all about how to make a move here to Temecula, California when moving from another state. So I'm going to talk to you guys about what I think is going to be the best practice and the best process to make that happen. How to really narrow down your home search and then how we can best do those home tours for you. So let's go ahead and get into it.

Hey guys. Hey again, my name is Justin Short. I'm a realtor and team leader for the short real estate team here in Temecula, California in Myriad California. And this video is all about how to make a move here to Temecula when making a move from out of state. So I think this is going to be a really helpful video for you guys. I have had a lot of clients that make those big moves from other states here locally, and there's some best practices that we've found, some best ways that we felt to really are able to streamline the process and make it a lot easier for you and your family. So hopefully this is something that'll be helpful for you guys. But before I get into all the info, if you are liking videos like this, do me a favor, please hit like please sit, subscribe.

So obviously it helps me, it helps my channel. We're trying to continue to grow it. And then we have new videos that we put out each and every week talking about best neighborhoods, worst neighborhoods, market updates, neighborhood tours, all types of stuff. And then if you guys have any specific real estate questions, of course I'd love to hear from you so you can feel free, you can call, you can text, you can email me. You're going to see my information either down below or at the end of the video. And of course I would be happy to chat with you. I'd love to help you in any way that we can with your home search, either myself or my team, and hopefully we'll hear from you soon. But we'll go ahead and get into it. So I thought this one was kind of important just because there are so many clients, so many of you guys that reach out, usually when you are reaching out from the videos from YouTube, you don't live here locally.

So usually it's people making moves from other states, whether it's from Arizona, from Washington, from Oregon, from Idaho, from all types of areas all over the country, from Minnesota, and of course, happy to be a resource for you guys. Hopefully this is a good way for you to get educated on the area and some good useful tips. But it can be really difficult when you and your family are making those big moves out of state as far as just kind of nailing down that process. So kind of what we found to work the best for our clients is to first start step one. I know you guys are doing your research, you're online and you're all over Zillow and looking at listings, all that type of stuff. But this isn't an area that you're really interested in. I would highly recommend that you make a trip out here, fly or drive I guess, but fly out here to the valley, take a look around, drive around Southern California, drive around Temecula, drive around Marietta, drive around Menifee.

I think it's going to be a really, really useful time for you guys. I've had a handful of clients make a move out here without ever visiting. I can tell you that it's always going to make me a little bit nervous because you don't really know exactly what the area is like, if at all possible. I would really, really encourage you guys to make a trip out here and be able to drive through and experience the area, make sure it's a good fit for you and your family first. And if you are going to be doing that, I have what I think is something that's pretty helpful. We have a couple downloads on our website. You're going to see some information down below. You can click on a link, but there's a few PDFs that you can download that just kind of talked to you about some things that we recommend to check out.

So some family friendly activities, some restaurants that I recommend, some different neighborhoods that I recommend maybe to kind of drive through to get a good feel for the area. So those are helpful. I would at least check those out or if you can always ask me and I can just email you the PDFs as well. But I think that's going to be something that is super helpful for you. And then what I would like you to try and do, or I would recommend for you to try and do when you make a trip out here, when you're driving around as you have a day or two to just check out the area, that's always a time that we can get together and meet as well. So I help a lot of you guys with these big relocations and I understand it's a process. Sometimes people feel like it's too early in the process for them to reach out to me and they kind of feel weird or bad or it's not a good use of my time for you guys to reach out.

But I want to let you know that I'm happy to meet with you. I'm happy to get together for 30 minutes, an hour, a couple hours, whatever it is to meet with you, meet face-to-face, shake your hand, talk to you a little bit about the area, talk to you about what you might be looking for. Hopefully, if anything, I can at least steer you in the right direction. Of course, we would love to help you out with your home search. We sell real estate full time, so we'd love to help you if that's going to be the route that you go. But if not, it's not too much of an ask for you guys to reach out and set up a time to do that. So please feel free, I would love to help you of course. And then when you do come out, if we get a chance to get together, great.

Whether that's the case or not, it's always going to be helpful if you can try to narrow down maybe three to five communities that you really like, right? So let's say if you're going to focus just on Temecula, you want to drive through the south portion of the city, you want to drive to the north portion of the city, you want to be able to drive through a handful of different neighborhoods and at least get a feel for like, Hey, we kind of like this neighborhood. Hey, we kind of like this one. Oh, this one's way too far. Maybe we don't like the way this one looks. Or this HOA seems way too strict. We can never live here, et cetera. So ideally when you're here, if you can narrow it down between three to five neighborhoods that you really like, stand out for you, that's really going to be really helpful as you get deeper into your search.

So that's one thing to think about the overall neighborhood. Another one to think about is just what type of home that you want. Are you going to really just focus on new construction or something that is newly built over the last either brand new or the last 2, 3, 4, 5 years, 10 years or so? Whatever it is. Do you want something that is move ready or do you want something that is maybe a little bit rougher, a little bit more of a fixture? And you can go in and put some flooring and maybe redo a kitchen and add some paint and make it beautiful and make it yours and maybe get at a little bit better price point in order to be able to do that. So really kind of thinking about where you want to fall there, right? Move in ready, or a little bit more of a fixer that needs a little bit of updating.

Usually out here, they're newer homes, so it's more of a cosmetic thing, but just kind of thinking about what's really going to be up your alley. And then really the last suggestion is just get really crystal clear on exactly what you're looking for in a home. So anytime that we get together. So I have a little worksheet that we kind of work through and really just talking to you about how many bedrooms, how many bathrooms, yes, but do we want a pool? Do we want no pool? Is there anything else that's important? Do we need that third car garage? Do we need RV parking? Are we open to a one story, open to a two story? What are going to be the real priorities for you? And get crystal clear to try and narrow down on what exactly you're looking for in a home. So between narrowing down a handful of neighborhoods, exactly what the criteria is going to be as far as bedrooms, bathrooms, all that type of stuff, and then what type of home, new fixer, move ready, et cetera.

That'll really help fine tune your home search because this is going to be your opportunity. If you don't live locally, you're going to fly home and it's going to be really, really difficult to tighten your parameters. Then being able to tighten down the parameters while you're here in town is going to be super helpful. So that's a big key. From there, if you take off and you go back home, right, you go back to your home state and we'll set you up with a home search on our end. We can do a search straight from the MLS, or you can take a look at properties that are going to pop up online on Zillow or Redfin or any of these different third party sites. It's going to be great to look through the different options. And then we have to think, okay, hey, once we find homes that we like and we're really serious and certain about this home search, are we going to fly out to view homes?

Well, that can be really difficult for most people, depending on your work and life schedule. And also costs money every time you jump on a plane. So a lot of times we are able to do virtual showings for clients. That's something that works really well. So once we get together and we chat, we can narrow down criteria and when we find something that fits, I can go, I do a nice little virtual tour. It's probably, I dunno, a five to 10 minute tour. I'll give you the ins and outs, give you my perspective, what I think of the neighborhood, what I think of the house, and hopefully be able to highlight some of the pros and cons while I'm there. I can upload the video, send it off to you guys to be able to check out. And from there, if it's something you're interested in, then you can try and pursue it with an offer or decide how you want to proceed from there.

So that is usually going to be the best thing is setting up a virtual showing. But I've had clients that fly out for all their showings too. So it just depends on what you're able to do. And then from there, once it comes time that we find a property that we like and we want to pursue it with an offer, just keep in mind, think about what your situation is, right? If you have a home that you're currently living in, are you going to be renting that out? Do you need to sell it? Is that a rental? So we're not too concerned on when we're going to be able to move out from that, et cetera. If you have a home that you need to sell today, so this is 2024, the market, it's definitely more of a seller's market. So know that in order to get your offer accepted out here, you're really going to need to list your home for sale and find a buyer, really have it in escrow before you can have an offer accepted out here.

So if your purchase in California is contingent upon you selling your home back in your home state, you got to move the sale forward a little bit. Get your home in escrow before you can write a strong offer out here. So people have different means. If you don't need to sell it in order to qualify, then that makes that process a lot easier for you. But this is a conversation we have a lot. We have some clients right now that are moving out from Illinois and they tried writing an offer before their home was in escrow. We weren't able to get it accepted. As soon as their home in Illinois accepted an offer, we were able to get an escrow very quickly out here. So that's a super common thing now, especially as we're getting more into the spring market, it's a little bit more competitive, a little more activity.

You're going to have to move forward that sale a little bit further if that's what you're going to do, okay? From there, ideally we find a house that we like, and we get an offer accepted. Hopefully everyone's happy, right? Hopefully it's a great thing. We're going to open escrow. The question I get asked all the time is, Hey, do I need to fly out back to California at all during the process? Do I need to be there for closing at the closing table, et cetera? So the answer is no. You do not need to be here. We can do everything virtually. We can do everything through DocuSign. We can do, we send you a mobile notary in order to notarize your docks at closing, et cetera. So there's nothing that you necessarily need to be here in person. However, I would highly, highly, highly recommend that you come out for at least the home inspection.

So you're going to hire a home inspector, we're going to send 'em out to the house. I will be there. They're going to take a look. They're going to be there for two, three hours. They're going to look at all the electrical, all the plumbing, they're going to look at the roof, they're going to get up in the attic, they're going to test everything, make sure it's all working during that time. That is a great time for you as a buyer to be there. You want to be there for about an hour, hour and a half or so. Take a look at the property in person, be able to walk through it and work and visualize where your furniture is going to be. Think about how that's all going to be placed. And really at that point, we've gotten so serious. You have written an offer.

You have your offer accepted on a house. You really want to be able to make that flight out. If for whatever reason you are not able to do that, I've had clients buy homes without ever seeing 'em, without coming out for home inspection. To me, it's a little nerve wracking for me as the agent, right? Because I'm just, obviously, I'm hoping you guys are going to love it, but it is something it's possible to do without you ever being here. But I would highly, highly suggest that you come out for the home inspection, be able to be here in person and do that. A lot of times, if it's a married family, just one spouse needs to come. If you can both be here, that's even better. But life is life and sometimes you got other priorities that are going on. But I would highly, highly recommend that to be the case.

And from there, we would just move forward with the escrow and eventually, eventually close. So that would really be the big thing. You want to take some time, set up that exploratory trip, come back to California, we can get together and chat at that time. We want to really narrow down your criteria, what areas you want to be in, what type of house you're looking for, new, old fixer, et cetera. Really get crystal still clear on criteria. And then once we're doing showings, we can do the virtual showings and then once an offer is accepted,  hopefully being able for you guys to come out, be here in person for that, and eventually be able to close escrow and get yourself a new home here in California. Hopefully that's helpful. You guys have any questions, you can reach out and you see my information down below or at the end of the video, and you're going to see that link for that download if that's something that's helpful to you, so you can feel free to call, text, email, and talk to you soon. Thanks.