Home Buying 101
1. Getting Pre-Approved The first step is to get pre-approved for a mortgage. There are a couple reasons for this. The first reason to make a pre-approval your first step is negotiating power. You, as a home buyer, will have much more leverage with a seller when you have a pre-approval in your hand. Especially if there is another buyer interested in the home who is not pre-approved. The second reason you want to be pre-approved is if you find a Foreclosure Property the seller won't even look at an offer without a pre-approval.
2. Find A Home After you've been pre-approved for a loan, it's time to start looking. All you need to do is tell me what you're looking for - or if you've already signed up with us, log-in to your website and pick some homes out that catch your eye. Once you've selected a few homes as possibilities, we will set up a time for a showing in order to go look at the inside of the homes you've picked out.
3. Make An Offer Now that we've looked at a handful of homes, and you've found one you want to buy - we will make sure your buy is a smart investment. Using recent sales - NOT what Zillow or the Tax Auditor says - we'll be able to find the realistic re-sale value in today's market: fair market value. We can get an accurate guage on the value and intelligently negotatie with the seller from a postion of power. We will make sure you get into the best postion possible on every offer you make, and make sure we have saftey nets in place should you not be able to buy.
4. Home Inspection Every offer we write is contingent upon a home inspection. This means, if we get into contract on a home - we'll have an opportunity to inspect the home for problems. If the inspector comes back and finds some issues with the home we will have a few options. Even on the "AS-IS" homes, we will have this protection. At that point, we can walk away from the deal and find a new home. We can re-negotiate the price of the home or ask the seller to make certain repairs. I'm always at my clients home inspections and I do recommend you be there as well as it's a great opportunity to get to know your new home.
5. Closing
After we inspect the home, and the lender has the money ready to go - it's time to close on your new home.
We'll do a final walk-thru of the home right before the closing to make sure everything is the way it should be. Again, an extra step to give you added protection.
After the walk-thru, we'll head to the closing where you'll get to spend anywhere from 5 minutes to an hour signing paperwork - depending on what type of loan you get or if you're paying cash.
Once your done signing - the keys are yours, and if done right, so is the equity.