When my husband and I bought our home—love at first sight—it felt like the end of a hard-won battle, a sensation familiar to many house-hunters. We’d toured over 100 properties over an enormous geographic area, politely traipsing through every room even at places we knew weren’t for us, making awkward conversations with homeowners and realtors all the while.

Needless to say, we learned a lot.

Naturally, if you’re house-hunting, you want to spend the least amount of time touring inappropriate homes and the maximum hours enjoying your new dream house. Here are some key tips on what to pay close attention to—and what you can quite literally ignore—on a house tour.

Where to Start

First off, know that there are all kinds of ways to tour homes, from the old school (often-awkward open houses with other potential buyers) to the new (touring yourself, even without a realtor, thanks to smartphone self-entry). If you’re proactively scouring the market, you’ll likely experience a little bit of everything.

Remember: You can tour any Bungalo home on your schedule, any time 8am-8pm, 7 days a week. Unlock home access.

No matter the format, however, the biggest challenge with house-hunting is keeping yourself focused on what ultimately matters most…to you. Know that any home on which you place an offer will have a professional building inspection—most mortgages are contingent upon it—so the touring stage of the house-hunting process has more to do with your personal checklist than behind-the-scenes elements such as working plumbing, roofing, and septic systems.

In other words, hone your definition of what makes a dream home with each tour, but conserve your precious energy. Don’t feel like you need to become a general contractor before you walk through that first front door.

What to Skip

Remember that your time is precious, and you’re on a mission. It may seem rude to not chat up the homeowner or partake of the crudité spread laid out by the realtor, but it’s really okay—you are all here to make a deal. Don’t feel awkward about getting down to business and briskly checking out every detail of the home.

In an ideal world, every for-sale home would be pre-inspected for your total peace of mind. But if you’re casting a wide net, you’ll come across all manner of design and renovation decisions. All pros agree that, yes, hideous decor can be off-putting, but it shouldn’t sour you on an otherwise solid home. Ugly paint jobs are easily and cheaply fixed, and the current owner’s living room set will be long gone before you move in. Focus instead on the underlying structure and layout of a home to see what glory may lie beneath.

Your home will likely be the biggest financial investment you’ll ever make, so don’t let anyone pressure you into a sale—not your family, your realtor, or your bestie who desperately wants you as a neighbor. If possible, ask the seller to let you visit the house on your own, without the distraction of other buyers or dealmakers; sit with the space and take it all in, quietly.

While you’re there, experts suggest that you do check that everyday fixtures and interior work are in proper working order: Open every tap, flick on every light switch, flush every toilet and take notes on anything that’s not up to snuff. (Little fixes can oftentimes add up to huge bucks, so be willing to move on if an initially dreamy property shows signs of being a money pit).

Finally, even though your ideal market might be tight, decide before you even begin your house hunt what things are negotiable and what are deal-breakers. It’s good to be flexible, say, about adding an extra five minutes to your commute for the perfect place, but if you have kids (or are planning for them), being within a great school district is non-negotiable.

Insider Tips

Most experts agree that the siting of a house and exposure to natural light is one of the most crucial factors in choosing a home. Abundant sunlight has been proven to boost our mood (not to mention making every interior much more Instagramable), and a home not hemmed in by hills or thick vegetation will “breathe” much more efficiently. Pay close attention to the landscape and trees surrounding every home you tour, and make sure there’s ample natural light in all of the rooms. For a house you truly love, it’s worth visiting at different times of the day to check out the exposure from sunup to sundown.

The powerful adage “how you do anything is how you do everything” also applies to homes. When you’re on a tour, take the time to look at the little things. Do the doors hang evenly in their frames? Is the tiling in the bathroom meticulously spaced and flush with the wall? Are the doorknobs and other fixtures fastened well and in good working order? Are any of the light bulbs burned out? If you see a bunch of small problems and things that seem “off,” it’s often a sign that the previous owners deferred maintenance.

And lastly, use your nose. Experienced real estate agents say that any potent masking scent—from candles, plug-in wax burners, even fresh-baked cookies—at a home tour is almost always a sure sign that the seller has something unsavory to hide. Don’t be shy: Poke around closets and under-sink cabinets and sniff for any indication of mold or decay.

The bottom line: the more houses you tour, the quicker you’ll learn to assess what makes for a great structure, and which ones you can skip walking into altogether. Don’t let yourself get rushed through a tour, stay true to your checklist, and feel free to revisit potential winners multiple times. With any luck, it’ll take you far fewer tours than our 100+ to find your very own home sweet home.

A Dallas journalist spills on all the best parts of the city she’s lived in for two decades.

Before I moved to Dallas, I did what most recent college graduates do: I jumped jobs to climb the career ladder. For me, as a print journalist, that meant three jobs in three years in three different cities.

Dallas was my fourth city on that track. And when I arrived in the 90s, I discovered I had a passion not just for my job, but for my new hometown, as well. I soon met people who came from all over the country (and the world) in search of career opportunities in Texas’ largest metropolitan area. In fact, it became a running joke among my friends to say that nobody in Dallas was actually from Dallas, but we all got here as quickly as we could.

Two decades in, I now consider myself a local—and a proud one, at that, thanks to assignments covering everything from the businesses built here to the developers working to rejuvenate our neighborhoods. It’s true that we are shameless boosters when it comes to promoting this fine city, and while our boosterism may initially seem over the top (hey, everything’s bigger in Texas), just know that we love Dallas and hope you will, too.

Dallas Fast Facts
Population: 1,341,075
County: Dallas County (2.553 million)
Number Neighborhoods: 34
Size of city: 385.8 sq miles (3,476 people per sq mile)
Schools: According to Niche, Carroll Independent school district northwest of inner-Dallas ranks highest in the city. The elementary, middle and high schools all have outstanding reviews—and the data to back it up!
Heatwave: It isn’t uncommon for temperatures to reach triple digits in the summer months in Dallas. But this city’s climate does have some perks—like very mild winters. 65 degrees in November? We’ll take it!
BBQ is King: Known for amazing BBQ, Dallas boasts more than 410 yummy spots to find some brisket. In fact, you’ve got a good chance of being within a mile of a BBQ joint at any given time when strolling through the city.

We’re Growing, But We Won’t Break the Bank

Dallas–Fort Worth leads the nation’s metros for population growth with 146,000 people moving here in 2017. We’ve got a central location, an international airport, an educated workforce, a business-friendly environment and a host of cultural amenities. And compared to both coasts and most other large cities—it’s affordable.

More than 20 of the country’s Fortune 500 companies have their headquarters here ranging from AT&T, Texas Instruments and American Airlines to Toyota North America, ExxonMobil and JCPenney. But it’s not just big businesses that like us. Entrepreneurs, like billionaire Mark Cuban, love Dallas’ can-do attitude. The region is home to several business incubators and about two dozen billionaires—several of them self-made.

We Don’t Meet Unless We Eat

Going out to eat is a major pastime here, and the variety is off the charts.

If you are new to town, the Reunion Tower observation deck is a great place to see the city’s skyline. The top of Reunion Tower also houses celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck’s Five Sixty restaurant, which has a slowly revolving dining room and floor-to-ceiling windows to provide an amazing view of a skyline that has been unofficially voted the best in the world. Reservations required!

Dallasites are prone to boast about the city’s host of celebrity chefs who serve up some of the most artistic—and best tasting—food around. But we are also down to earth and love, love, love to eat barbecue, fried chicken and Tex-Mex like it’s going out of style.

We’ve Got the Sights

Like the bigger-than-life TV show of old, we still do things up big, and one way is with a biennial public art display of unprecedented magnitude. Aurora, held every other year, transforms downtown Dallas into an open-air, urban playground of new media art, with installations of light, video, and sound.

If you are downtown or uptown, you’ll want to check Klyde Warren Park, which was built over a freeway and is a wonderful expanse of greenbelt that has connected the city’s arts district to downtown. Food trucks visit its edges, and the park itself has a restaurant, dog park, entertainment stages and a host of free activities each week. The arts district that Klyde Warren connects to has dozens of cultural amenities, from an opera house to a performing arts center. The district attracts 4 million visitors a year.

We’ve Got Great Places to Live

Our center city is thriving with dozens of fashionable high-rise apartments and condos amid office towers for a vibrant live-work-play environment for young professionals, who you’ll find at uptown’s patio bars and restaurants or riding, running or walking along the immensely popular 3.5-mile Katy Trail.

Not your thing? We’ve also got plenty of traditional neighborhoods, from the shaded tree-lined streets of Kessler Park and Lakewood to the more elite Preston Hollow or Highland Park, where 6,000-square-foot estates are common. And don’t knock the DFW suburbs: Frisco, Allen, Plano, Coppell and Grapevine regularly rank among the best suburbs in the state and nation for top-notch schools and family-friendly amenities. The Dallas suburbs have much to offer, too, downtown McKinney is a favorite for those looking for a quaint, but rich-in-history home.

We Welcome Outsiders with Open Arms

Like myself, a lot of people living in Dallas aren’t originally from here (a quarter of the city’s residents weren’t even born in the state of Texas)—so no matter where you’re from, you’ll fit right in. We are a melting pot of people from around the world, living together, mostly in harmony, and loving it. Welcome home.

Almost home! Tour our Dallas-Fort Worth homes here.

A local writer shares what makes her city by the bay (no, not San Francisco) the place she calls home.

The choice to move to Tampa was a simple one—mostly because it wasn’t my choice at all.

I was 10 when my parents packed the station wagon with boxes, boarded my brothers, sister and me, and drove to the doorsteps of the Hyde Park home where my mother still lives.

Like most Midwesterners, they sought escape from seasonal snow, gray days and plants blooming for only a few months in exchange for year-round sunshine, balmy breezes and fragrant flowers.

We settled in one of the city’s oldest residential areas. It’s also among its most desirable addresses for young professionals, families and empty nesters who like streets lined with sidewalks, shops within walking distance and neighbors who know each other by name.

Eventually, my career and personal life moved me throughout the state and even across the country. Years later, I returned. It’s not difficult to understand why considering what I loved about Tampa while growing up is still part of its identity. And what I went looking for elsewhere is now available here—in abundance.

We’re Growing

In many ways, Tampa is a city on the move. It’s grown considerably since the 50s when a modest 125,000 people called it home. Today almost 380,000 folks reside within its city limits and nearly 3 million have homes within the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metropolitan area. Its economy continues to generate jobs, expand into industries like technology, and groom startups (one recent report valued Tampa’s startup community at $2.3 billion). Health and life sciences as well as EdTech are two industries where Tampa’s start-up scene thrives—creating jobs in the area along with venture capital investments.

Originally a hardscrabble cargo port, Port Tampa Bay now moves more cargo than any port in Florida—a staggering 37 million tons annually. It’s also evolved into a departure point for leading cruise lines carrying passengers from around the world.

And we can’t forget about Busch Gardens. The well-known theme park actually started as a beer brewery and bird garden. Today it has become one of the nation’s most popular theme parks, boasting attendance figures of nearly 4 million in 2017. There’s still beer brewed there, but the focus is more on microbrews than mass production—Tampa’s brewing community is well known worldwide for its award-winning craft beers.

Tampa Fast Facts
Population: 361,477
County: Hillsborough
Number Neighborhoods: 73
Size of city: 175.2 sq mile (2,063 people per sq mile)
Schools: According to data from Great Schools, Tampa’s Culbreath neighborhood in southwest Tampa boasts a number of high ranking middle schools. Plant High School in Tampa’s Palma Ceia ranks 10/10 in college readiness.
Last Hurricane: Worried about hurricanes? The likelyhood one will hit your new south Florida home is less than you think. The last major hurricane to directly hit Tampa Bay was in 1921. The category 4 Tampa Bay Hurricane saw 140 mph winds hit the are. Still, the bay remains at risk every year for this harsh storm weather, given its climate and surrounding area.
Walkability/Bikeability: Tampa has a few neighborhoods that are considered great for walking, particularly Downtown and Palma Ceia. If you’d prefer to bike, you’re in luck: Tampa was ranked one of the Top 50 Best Biking Cities by Bicycling Magazine—and with good reason, the city has 137 miles of on-street bike lanes.
Get Your Craft Beer Here: Tampa is home to 61 breweries including Florida’s oldest brewery—The Florida Brewing Company.

We Value Heritage

For all the change and evolution Tampa has undergone in recent years, there are many reminders of the city’s colorful past that continue to reflect its history and culture.

Take the University of Tampa, with its distinctive Moorish minarets, a more than century-old structure that originally opened as the Tampa Bay Hotel. Where wealthy guests once waltzed and played golf, college students now prepare for their futures.

Tampa’s value of heritage may best be seen, and experienced, in Ybor (pronounced EE-bore) City, a community just east of downtown Tampa. Immigrants from around the world first settled here beginning in the late 1880s to work in factories producing millions of hand rolled cigars. Their labors made this area famous as “The Cigar Capital of the World.” And while cigars are still manufactured here, many of those brick buildings have been converted into work and living spaces.

Still, Ybor City continues to honor its multi-cultural heritage through various festivals like Fiesta Day in February which features foods, music and entertainment representing the Cuban, Italian, Spanish, Jewish and German immigrants who first lived here. And the Cuban Sandwich Festival in March celebrates the community’s signature sandwich that fed many a cigar worker.

We’ve Got a Variety of Neighborhoods…and Lots of Water

The difficult decision of where to live in the Tampa Bay area is a daunting one (there aren’t many bad choices, if you ask me). There are many well established communities featuring homes with large yards in areas like Westchase an Carrollwood. More modest single family homes are found in Brandon and Riverview. Like the idea of living on an island? Then Harbour Island and Davis Islands, both close to Tampa’s downtown, may be ideal.

What truly sets Tampa apart, though, and gives it real appeal, is a very basic element: water. Bayshore Boulevard homes enjoy open-water views of the bay, while other sections of the city boast scenic lookouts over rivers, channels and lakes. Water Street in downtown Tampa is a popular new development, bringing an urban, lifestyle-oriented facelift to Tampa’s prized waterfront, with a mix of offices, homes, and retail. Head north along the renowned Hillsborough River, and you will find many mature and sought-after neighborhoods that border the river on both sides.

Water taxis provide great options for getting around town. Paddle boards and kayaks are easily launched from city parks and docks for fun in the sun. Ornate dragon boats may be spotted as teams churn up the waterfront to train for competitive heats, while local rowing teams set out at sunrise to practice while the waters are calm. Riverwalk, on Hillsboro River, boasts many great shops and restaurants, as well.

Water is also where Tampa’s signature celebration is held yearly, the pirate-themed Gasparilla event, featuring an actual pirate ship bearing hundreds of costumed pirates, who invade the city, march victoriously through the streets and attract more than a half-million swashbuckling wannabes to enjoy the festivities.

Of course, the best use of the water may simply be for it to frame the colorful and brilliant sunsets this west coast community enjoys at the end of each day. Welcome to Tampa.