Shopping for the perfect home can feel overwhelming. Some people look at hundreds of homes for sale before they find "the one." But you do not need to feel like house hunting is your second job, or as if it is taking over your life. Here are some tips to help keep house hunting more manageable.

Let your real estate agent do the searching.

It's so tempting to go online and start looking for homes for sale yourself. But while a little of this can be fun, doing it day in and day out can overwhelm your life. So leave the task to your real estate agent. This is part of what they are paid to do, anyways! Give them a good idea of what you're looking for in a home, and let them search the listings to find homes you may want to look at. 

Look at a few homes per day.

You may assume that the most efficient way to go house hunting is to look at a bunch of different homes on one day. But fatigue will set in after four or five homes, and then you won't be able to make smart decisions. You may walk away from a house that would have been perfect simply because you're too tired to recognize that there are a few simple changes you could make to it. Try to look at no more than four or five homes per day so you're looking at each home with fresh eyes. This will minimize the number of second visits you need to make to various homes.

Make a list from the get-go.

Before you even start looking at homes, make a list of your must-have features. Things that would be nice but not necessary should not be on this list. This is simply a list of things you cannot do without. Then, don't waste your time looking at any home that does not have all of those must-have qualities.

Narrow down your neighborhood.

If you're not sure exactly where you want to live, you may waste a lot of time driving from one side of town to the other while looking at homes. On the other hand, if you can narrow down your preferences to just one or two neighborhoods before you start shopping, then you'll save time. All of the homes you look at will be near each other, so you can see more in a shorter period of time.