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How long did it take for you to find your homestead?
I see so many folks who say they've searched for years to find their homestead.
Maybe we've been exceptionally fortunate or else we're not very picky
but in the last 29 yrs the longest we've ever searched for a place is 3wks, although in two places it took another month to get possession!! 
The shortest property search,offer and possesion was the current one.
While living in WI I called a real estate agent here, told them exactly what we wanted: a certain county, a yr round creek, hills, many trees/forest, price range, amount of acreage and it had to be remote. The real estate agent told us about two that fit the bill and we told him we'd be down in 3 days but while still on the phone we arranged to gave him $500 earnest money on the most likely of the two properties. I got the name of the local bank, called and had it put into an escrow account.
We were here 2 days later instead of the planned three, looked it over, stopped at the courhouse to check the title & easements situation. Went to the bank with all of our papers for a loan, sounded like it would go through so we placed an offer on it contingent upon financing being approved. The loan was approved 2 days later contingent upon a title search & appraisal. We were lucky, the appraiser came out the next day and the title search came back fast too.
It's great to work with a small, hometown bank!!
The people were anxious to move out of state so we took possession 2 wks later.
So, from the initial phone call less than three weeks had passed.
For those still searching; write down all the important things you want vs need, make a lot of calls & always believe that dreams do come true and sometimes quite quickly.
I see so many folks who say they've searched for years to find their homestead.
Maybe we've been exceptionally fortunate or else we're not very picky
The shortest property search,offer and possesion was the current one.
While living in WI I called a real estate agent here, told them exactly what we wanted: a certain county, a yr round creek, hills, many trees/forest, price range, amount of acreage and it had to be remote. The real estate agent told us about two that fit the bill and we told him we'd be down in 3 days but while still on the phone we arranged to gave him $500 earnest money on the most likely of the two properties. I got the name of the local bank, called and had it put into an escrow account.
We were here 2 days later instead of the planned three, looked it over, stopped at the courhouse to check the title & easements situation. Went to the bank with all of our papers for a loan, sounded like it would go through so we placed an offer on it contingent upon financing being approved. The loan was approved 2 days later contingent upon a title search & appraisal. We were lucky, the appraiser came out the next day and the title search came back fast too.
It's great to work with a small, hometown bank!!
The people were anxious to move out of state so we took possession 2 wks later.
So, from the initial phone call less than three weeks had passed.
For those still searching; write down all the important things you want vs need, make a lot of calls & always believe that dreams do come true and sometimes quite quickly.