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How do you get started?
My husband and I are hoping to purchase our first home next summer, but I feel like we have a lot of self-educating to do before then.
We are already working at saving up a nice down payment (hopefully $50k+ by next summer), and I troll listings to get a feel for what type of house is within our price range in this area. It's possible we would hold off until 2014, but the market right now is so great for buyers, that we really want to take advantage as soon as it's feasible for us.
I recently began watching House Hunters and paying more attention to house-buying articles, and sometimes I feel like they're speaking a foreign language! There are so many terms I'm not familiar with, questions I would never think to ask, processes I was unaware of - I feel like it would be very easy for us to get lost.
We are a young couple - my parents moved onto a farm that our family already owned, and H's family built their house when he was a toddler. So neither of us has any experience with close family or friends purchasing a home.
How did you get started in the process - any good websites, tips, advice, things you wish you'd known before?
Re: How do you get started?
I'm in the process of looking for a house right now.
I started out first by just learning the lingo so I wouldn't be confused when looking at any ads or mortgage info. I then researched the different types of mortgages to figure out which one is best for us.
Now we are just trying to find the right house and hear back from the pre-approval.
First, House Hunters is not educational lol. Sorry to burst your bubble, but it's completely staged. The buyers have already closed on one of the three houses (watch closely - they'll probably end up buying the vacant one) and the other two houses were probably never contenders. My friend was on it and would never have considered the other 2 houses they found for her.
Next, hit up your local library and pick up a copy of Home Buying for Dummies and any other beginners' guides. Be careful with online resources - many are written by people with an angle (agents, brokers, etc). Books are really the best way to go because they're reliable, well-organized, and easily digestible.
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Go to a First Time Home Buyer's seminar, local banks have them all the time. Continue reading listings and getting a feel of what the market is like in the area you want to buy into. Go to open houses, talk to the realtors there and get to know some of them. When you're ready to get serious about financing, talk to a loan officer and get a pre-approval.
The most important tool we used was our buyers agent--she was honest, knowledgeable, resourceful, we learned so much from her and she saved us from ourselves lol.
Our agents was the best resource...we went to tons of open houses just for fun, so by the time we realize we could actually afford to think about buying, we had a good idea of what we wanted, when we found a agent (at an open house) that really seemed to get what we wanted (and was ok with a longer time line), he really helped us with the rest of the process, including what to ask banks and everything! (He even took a pay cut on the house we bought because what we could get approved for was about 2000$ less than the house after inspections and closing and everything, so he took it off his own paycheck to make it work because he was so proud that he found such a perfect house for us!)
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We basically started looking around online and drove by the houses for sale to see what we would like to have for our own house.
We also contacted a realtor (but didn't sign anything) and he was more than glad to show us some houses so we could get an idea of what we wanted.
We also contacted several lenders to see what our options are and figured out our budget before starting to look at houses.
Lol, I do realize House Hunters isn't an accurate depiction of the home-buying process (they always get the house they want - never any mention of there being better offers or it falling through in closing) but it lets us at least see different layouts and somewhat figure out what features we like in a house.
I am glad to see several of you mention going to open houses - that was something I had mentioned wanting to do on a different site and I was warned not to, because if we fell in love with something, we'd be tempted to buy. But we know right now we can't buy, so I know that isn't a risk. We simply want to get a feel for the houses in our area, that are in our budget.
We'll definitely have to look up a home-buying seminar, that sounds like a really great resource.
Thanks for the tips!
wow! it sounds like you had a fantastic agent! I don't suppose he's in southern WI by any chance.......
One of the most helpful things that my husband and I did was sit down and make a list of things we "must have" in a home, things we "want, but don't need" and things "we don't want". It really helps you, and your future buyer's agent (if you get one) figure out what you are looking for.