So what are the eight tips to ensure you’re ready to buy
your first
home? That’s what we’ll be talking about today.
Number One – Determine if you’re ready to buy a home.
Home
ownership can be a little more expensive than renting. Before you were paying your
rent and your utilities. So now you’ll still have those payments but you need
to now consider the fact that you’re going to need to take on maintenance
issues. You’re not just calling the landlord to say come fix this.
Think about things like the furnace could go
out or what plumbing challenges you have or yard maintenance things to this
extent and some of the other fees.
The
other thing that you probably haven’t been paying when you’re paying rent.
You were paying it for someone else though, is taxes. Property taxes and the insurance on your home. These
are expenses that you need to consider. And look at that when you do look on a
calculator on some of these online sites. Many times they don’t figure taxes
& insurance into the equation. So include them to get a realistic number, alright?
It will make it a lot easier when you
really do this to see that you can afford a house.
Let’s go to number two: Start shopping for a loan
When shopping
for a loan is there a loan store you go to? Where do you shop? Maybe you’ve been dealing with a bank for many
years and you know somebody like the bank manager or mortgage person that
you’ve worked with so that would be a good place to start.
If not
go and check with mortgage lenders where they can actually look for mortgage
rates from different banks to find you the best rate and put together the best
package for the best loan that fits your needs. So find out what those are.
Once
you find a loan with good terms and a set mortgage rate, not an adjustable rate,
you can start looking and doing your home buying process.
Number Three: Find The Best Payment Options
Find
the best payment options and loan types when it comes to mortgage you may be
surprised at the different loan types and different options that are available.
It can be baffling you know when you look at Arms and PMI and what all these things
mean. Usually a 15 or a 20 year loan is the best option. You also see them as
30-year loans. That may give you a little bit lower payment. Depending on how
much you want to spread this out, many people look at what their payment is and
where they’re comfortable.
You may
even consider some creative financing to cover some of your down payment, You want
to be careful that you do that right and speak with your mortgage lender and
your Realtor to see that you understand what you’re getting into and how it
affects the way you’re making your payment.
Number Four: Be honest about what you can afford.
Now the
lender may say “look this is great you can qualify for $400,000 for
your loan” and that’s fine. But maybe you want a
lower payment than what that $400,000 home would get you. So make sure you’re comfortable.
Just because you qualify for a certain amount doesn’t mean you have to take
that. Find the home you want but stay within a comfortable budget. It’ll pay
off in the long run.
Number Five – Find yourself a good realtor.
This is your chance to find someone who’s working in the marketdaily that knows what’s going on and what’s
available. And even if you don’t see what you want today, because of all these
websites we have nowadays they can be feeding you outdated information.Youknow Trulia, Redfin, Realtor.com all of them can feed you all this
information but many times they are not current.
You’ll
find some mixes in there you’ll even find information where something’s already
been sold, but they aren’t updated yet. So to check, get yourself a Realtor
that will work with you. What you want to listen to there is that word “listen.” Do they listen to you first to
see what your wants are? What your needs
are? They’re going to want to know did you get
prequalified? Did you talk to a lender and if not they can help you find
someone to do that. Did you tell them to what you want in the home, what your
dream is and then let’s look at what you’ll take, that you might be able to add
to later. You know maybe you can
get something needs a little fixing do a little
remodel. So get someone who will listen and find what you want. And there again
things are not always available at that time. But that realtor may be able to
go out and help you find things that aren’t being marketed now that we’re
possibly marketed before.
I know
we keep a list of homes that have gone off the market or coming back on. Those
who said they’re ready to sell but not at this moment. So we can contact them
and see if they’re ready at this time. So we can find you that perfect home.
Number Six- Request a home inspection.
It’s a good
thing to find out just like when you go buy that car. “Kick the tires light the
fires” as they say. Take it to your mechanic to check. Here you have an
inspector come in look at the house. They will go through things (and we’ve
even got another video on that if you just check here). The inspector will help
you see if this house has been taken care of or maybe there’s some deferred
maintenance that needs to be addressed. That will help you when you go to put
an offer on the house to be able to go and negotiate a better price if needed
or negotiate to have certain things fixed that may need fixing that haven’t
been.
So that
will be a chance for using that inspection to help you work to get the best
price but also to understand and put you at ease so you can sleep knowing what
you’re buying. Knowing what you’re getting and what things are have been taking
care of, or what maybe needs to be taken care of in the future.
Number Seven- Be patient during escrow.
Escrow
is going through and making sure to basically protect you the buyer or you the
seller and the lender to see that everything matches and works. If the title is
clear then everything is good. No liens and such on the property. All the fees
all the documentation is taken care of and put
in place and checked and double-checked before
this thing set to be signed. There should be someone there at escrow going
through that with you. But you need to take you take the responsibility to look
it over, ask questions, and if something doesn’t match what you’ve been told
before it doesn’t
look right, get the answers. Because you’re the
one who’s signing your name on that document and
you want to make sure that you know what you’re
getting into. So don’t be afraid to ask questions. They’re going to take this
paperwork go through it rather quickly because they’re doing this all day every
day. But you can stop them and say” look I need to know if this right” or is
this what I’m signing because you
ultimately take the responsibility of paying
that loan back to the lender.
Number Eight – Close and move in.
Yeah we’re gonna get
there! That’s such an exciting day when
you get those keys handed to you and it’s yours! You say “this is great!”
So then
there’s a couple things to think about. Hopefully just before closing you’ve
figured out and sat down and contacted the utility companies and said hey I
need the utilities transferred. Don’t forget to change your address with your
bank accounts. Now you have to do a change of address for your driver’s license
and any other documentation that you have that can be important that needs mail
coming to you now.
Go to
the post office okay you can go there fill out the form or you can go online. Everything’s
online nowadays and change an address so that all your mail and documents get
to you.
So there you go there’s 8 tips for ensuring you’re ready to purchase your first home. I hope that was helpful to you. If you’ve got any questions other than that or things that we brought up that you might want clarified, don’t hesitate give me a call 253-278-9251or email [email protected] . Just drop me a line and I’ll be glad to help you answer those questions.
