This Is Barbara Corcoran's Best Advice on Buying a Home

Corcoran's advice can help you make sure you find a house that holds its value.

Barbara Corcoran is a shark on the hit show Shark Tank and is the founder of The Corcoran Group. Not only that, but she previously ran a real estate company and is a skilled entrepreneur and financial expert. Based on her credentials, you may want to listen to her advice on purchasing a home if you're in the market for a property of your own.

Corcoran has given one specific piece of advice that every would-be homeowner should seriously consider before they start shopping for properties or before they make an offer on one.

Home buyers should focus on location

Corcoran made a solid suggestion to homeowners who are coping with an unusual real estate market where inventory has been constrained and prices have been rising.

The finance expert said, "It is always, always in a normal market, about location, location, location. Put your emphasis on the better location and the lesser house."

Most people have to make tradeoffs when they purchase a home. For example, if your budget is not unlimited, you may have to choose between buying a larger or newer house in a location that's less than ideal or purchasing a smaller or older house in a more prime neighborhood.

When faced with this choice, Corcoran urges home buyers to prioritize the location of the house, even if that means not getting everything they've dreamed of in the property itself. This is solid advice.

Why is Corcoran's advice so important?

Most things about a home can be changed over time. You can upgrade outdated fixtures, for example, or add more space to a smaller house if needed. But you cannot change where the property is located. And if the location is inconvenient -- perhaps because it requires a longer commute or because it's not near any restaurants or stores -- you could come to regret your decision every day.

It's not just your personal happiness with the house that justifies focusing on location. If you buy in a desirable area, the property is much more likely to hold its value than if you buy a house in a spot where nobody wants to live. And that's important since you want your home's value to go up rather than stay stagnant or go down, which would put you at risk of going underwater on your mortgage.

It's understood that more people will desire to live in a prime spot, so there should always be more demand for houses in good locations than in bad ones. This helps your property appreciate and makes it easier for you to sell if you need to. If you sacrifice location and opt for a property that's far away from everything or in a bad school district, then every future buyer may take these serious and unresolvable downsides into account, potentially leading to less buyer interest in the home if you decide to list it.

Corcoran's advice isn't new. Real estate agents have long advised buyers to buy the worst house in the best neighborhood, or repeated a mantra about "location, location, location." But it's important for today's home buyers not to lose sight of this basic rule of thumb in competitive markets and to make sure they are focusing their property search on desirable neighborhoods, even if that means compromising on other features of the home.