How long does it take to find a new home? And how many do you need to see before you hit on the right one and pounce?

Some buyers are fussier than others. Vu Nguyen visited more than 100 open houses in the East Bay before buying a condo on Martin Luther King Dr in Berkeley three years ago. The home is now on the market — but he can still tell you about all the apartments that failed to meet his standards — he even kept a database of the listings to pull up details for comparison purposes.

Lidia Pringle in Tiburon visited an even higher number of homes before putting an offer in on the four-bedroom Mediterranean home in Mill Valley she now calls home. In a story in the Wall Street Journal Pringle recounts how she inspected 298 homes around Marin before reaching her decision.

A recent survey of California home buyers by the California Association of Realtors found that buyers who used brokers, on average, spent 10.3 weeks searching for homes this year, compared to 8.7 weeks in 2008.

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