View
Our Listings
| Home
Search | Free
Consultation | Community Info
Buying A Property?
Confused? There are an awful
lot of choices to make whenever you buy a home,
whether it's your first home or your fourth. But
here are some guidelines to follow to make your
transaction easier.
Finding
the right home starts with finding a good lender.
You need to know how much home you can afford,
how much money you will need for down payment
and closing costs, and what your monthly payments
will be. A lender can pre-approve you for a loan
and issue an approval letter. This is invaluable
when you are negotiating on a home! If more than
one comparable offer has been received the seller
will always choose the buyer who has the financing
in place.
The next step is determining which neighborhoods
you prefer within your budget. Since the first
rule of real estate is location, location, location,
we always recommend choosing the best community
you can afford even if it means choosing a somewhat
smaller home, as long as the home will accommodate
your lifestyle comfortably. Then when you are
ready to sell the home and move on you will be
assured of the maximum appreciation in the city.
Once
we have identified several neighborhoods to look
in, our advanced computer systems allows us to
customize your search to fit your special needs.
We can search by size, number of bedrooms &
garages, school zones, lot size, pools, fireplaces,
floor plan style, etc. We will preview the homes
for you, and only show you the ones we know are
the best on the market for price and condition.
And don't worry, you will know the home when you
walk into it! It will feel like your space.
Next we need to negotiate an offer with the seller.
The two most crucial points in the contract will
be the selling price and the closing date. To
find the proper offer price, we will do a market
analysis on the neighborhood for you and determine
how much other similar homes have been selling
for.
It's okay to offer a seller less than the listed
price, but don't expect him to consider a ridiculous
amount. Most sellers become highly insulted by
"low-ball" offers and retaliate in kind.
The key is to try and figure out an amount that
is slightly less than what the seller was expecting
to get, and that is close enough that the seller
gets more nervous about losing a possible sale
than about the sales price.
Also take into consideration how you will feel
if you lose the house to another buyer. Sometimes
trying to save a couple of thousand dollars is
not worth losing the home of your dreams.
It is also a great idea to give
the seller MORE earnest deposit than he asked
for. This is the "sincerity" money which
is placed into escrow as soon as the contract
is negotiated. Giving the seller more guarantees
him you are serious about his home and can go
through with the sale. It also might make him
agree to a lesser sales price.
After the offer is accepted it
is time to choose a home inspector. We always
recommend having one, even on new construction.
They will go through the home and up in the attics
checking all the major systems. They will find
defects a normal buyer could not reasonably expect
to discover and often the seller doesn't know
about them either. A few hundred dollars invested
here can save you thousands.
The lender will also be sending
out an appraiser. The appraiser's job is to make
sure you are not paying more than fair market
value for the property.
Then it's time to work on turning
on the utilities, transferring medical records,
registering for schools, etc. (relocation checklist)
while the lender is processing your final loan
paperwork.
About
four days prior to the recording date we will
do a final walk through inspection of the home.
We will check to make sure everything in the home
is still in good working condition and anything
noted by the home inspector has been fixed.
Then
we will go to the escrow office to sign the final
loan documents and take in a cashier's check for
the balance of the down payment and closing costs.
The
day the property is recorded at the county recorder's
office is the day you get your keys. This is when
title is actually transferred from the seller's
name to yours, and now it's time to celebrate!
|
