Buy your dream home with confidence!

Ready to buy a home, now what? Buying a home for the first time can be emotional, exciting, and also exhausting experience. You may also wonder, what am I missing? This is a common question. Here’s a little info about the buying process.

• Do some preliminary online searching. Check local listings to see what homes are selling for in your desired areas. This helps you refine your wish list with your agent.
• What's my budget/payment? Use an online mortgage calculator to estimate your monthly mortgage payment for the homes you’ve found. Include additional costs like utilities to see if it fits within your budget.
• Speak to a Lender / get pre-approved. To get pre-approved with a Lender 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 you can check out competitor banks as well – you may get a better mortgage loan rate by shopping around. Also, consider the amount your lender approves you for as a maximum – this is by no means what you should spend.
• Call Us, Your Realtor®!  A good real estate agent will help you navigate the process every step of the way. If you don't know where to pre-approved, or need additional contacts, we will send you a few trusted experts to call for financing.
• Look at homes with us. Be patient at this stage. We may show you a variety of homes to get to know you and your feelings on features we think you’ll like. Give us detailed feedback so we can show you homes that are perfectly suited to you. Sometimes, this process can take a while, so be patient with us and yourself. Also, make sure you let friends and family know you’re looking for a new home--you may even find out about an amazing home before it hits the market.
• Make an offer. Once you’ve found your dream home, you may want to move quickly. We will guide you on a reasonable first offer to start negotiations based on market conditions. Also, make sure you consider closing costs which could account for 2-5% of the home price.
• Negotiate. Prepare to go back and forth with the seller thru us (your agent) a few times on price and terms. 
• An accepted offer. WooHoo!  When you reach an agreement, you will be "under contract" & you’ll make an Earnest Money Deposit (EMD) to an escrow account to show good-faith.  The EMD will go towards your closing cost when we go to closing.
• Inspections: Home, Wood Destroying Organisms. Even if the home appears to be in good shape, 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. 
• Behind the Scenes:  While the inspections are being done, the lender will be working with you to get all of your documents for financing, an appraisal will be ordered to make sure the home is of value (what the lender is going to lend you to purchase the home).  A property survey will be ordered to show your actual property lines & where any and all buildings are placed on the property.  The Title Company will be running a title search.
• Closing. When your negotiations with the seller are successful, and the inspection came back clean, you should be ready to close. At your closing, you’ll spend a little over an hour signing lots of paperwork and then will be handed the keys.