Buying Tips

• Prepare your budget – Prepare you budget don’t consider a future raise or savings when you are planning your budget. When you have your budget together contact a loan officer.
• Get Pre-Qualified -  Contact a loan officer to get pre-qualified for a mortgage loan.  Your loan officer will crunch the numbers to advise you of your debt-to-income ratio, this will include your monthly housing costs, including principal, interest, taxes, insurance, and homeowner association fees, if any. It will also include your monthly consumer debt and from this they can determine what amount you cab be pre approved for that shows your monthly payment. This is your magic number for selecting a home. Keep in your budget.
• Things Not to Do Before Purchasing a Home –Do Not Make Any Large Purchases such as car, furniture major appliances, electronics, vacations or expensive wedding.  The desire to spend money is there, but depending on your new home purchase they will be costs at your purchase and closing and you need to be prepared.
• Don’t Move Money Around - When a lender reviews your loan package for approval, one of the things they consider is the source of funds for your “Down Payment” and closing costs. You will asked to provide statements for the last two or three months on any of your liquid assets. This includes checking accounts, savings accounts, money market funds, certificates of deposits, stock statements, mutual funds and even your company 401K and retirement accounts.
• Search for a Good Realtor – talk to professionals from real estate related professions and ask their opinions, when you meat with your realtor conduct an interview, you want someone who will be concerned about you and your interests. To demonstrate ready knowledge of homes available for sale and understand your price range and keeping within your guidelines you have set.  When you decide on a realtor and  set the appointment, the realtor should arrive completely prepared with several options within your guidelines to show you and be knowledgeable at each home and able to answer questions.  If not, then you need to find another agent.
• Determining Your Offer – when you find that perfect home, you already know the seller’s asking price, but what price are you going to offer, first you need to ask your agent to help you look at recent sales of similar properties with the same condition, market conditions and circumstances of the seller. With this information your agent can help you determine a suitable offer for the property.
• Making the Offer – before deciding on creating an offer you will want to take a thorough tour of the property and request all disclosures about the home. Besides an appraisal and termite inspection, you should also have a professional home inspector go thru the house and seek potential problems.  If you make the offer be sure it is contingent upon the inspection process.  A “good faith deposit” may be required.
• Final Walk Thru Inspection – before closing, you will want to revisit proper to ensure it is in the condition you have required in your offer,  and to inspect that any required repairs have been preformed. You should do this no sooner than 5 days before closing. Make sure the final inspection is included in your offer to purchase the home.