Buy your dream house with confidence

So, you want to buy a house—now what?  Buying a home is an emotional, exciting, and also exhausting experience. You may also be wondering along the way—what am I missing?  This is a common question. Here’s how the buying process works from start to finish.

• Do some preliminary online searching. Check into what homes are selling for in the areas you’re interested in to give you an idea of what you’re looking for. This will help later on when communicating your wish list with our team.
• Take care of the budget. Use an online mortgage calculator to determine what your monthly mortgage payment would be if you were to purchase one of these homes you’ve found online. Make some additional estimates for utilities and see if this fits into your budget.
• Get pre-approved. To get pre-approved for a mortgage you’ll need to get some paperwork ready: pay stubs, W-2s, bank account statements, tax returns for the past two years, and credit lines, and names and addresses of your landlords for the past two years. Start with your current bank, but make sure you check out competitor banks as well – you might get a better mortgage loan rate by shopping around.  Contact us for a list of potential lenders that we have used for many years.  Also, consider the amount your lender approves you for as a maximum – this is by no means what you should spend.
• Look at homes. Be patient at this stage. We will show you a variety of homes that meet your criteria.  It is perfectly ok if you only select one, two or three homes to view.  There is no need to look at homes that don't meet your criteria and budget.  Give your agent detailed feedback so they can show you homes that are perfectly suited to you.
• Make an offer. Once you’ve found your dream home, you may want to move quickly. We  will guide you with market pricing and terms to help you be successful with your first offer.  Also, make sure you consider closing costs which could account for 2-5% of the home price.
• Negotiate. After the offer has been submitted a seller will consider your price, terms and conditions.  As long as there is a meeting of the minds, your offer, 1) may be accepted as written or 2) counter-offered.  We are skilled in helping you with this entire process until we are successful.
• An accepted offer.  If you reach an agreement and the offer is accepted the offer must be delivered to all parties, this is called being "ratified".  Once we have a ratified offer the amount of the escrow contained in the purchase offer will be paid by you to the escrow agent.
• Do a home inspection. Even if the home appears to be flawless, there’s no substitute for having a professional inspector review the property for quality, safety, and general condition of your potential home. You don’t want to be surprised with a home that needs a lot of unexpected repairs. If the inspection reveals undisclosed serious defects, you can negotiate further to have the seller make repairs or discount the selling price. You’ll also likely have the option to withdraw your offer and get your deposit money back.
• Closing. When your loan is approved and your inspection is complete you should be ready to close. At your closing, you’ll spend a little over an hour signing lots of paperwork and then your attorney will record the deed at your local jurisdiction courthouse.