Today I’m going to discuss the process of buying a house – this is great information for buyers and sellers, because let’s face it – you should know what the process is like on both sides of the aisle.  Not in a political way.

First I’d like to welcome my subscribers, and if you’re new, hit that subscribe button!  I’d love to see you back here again and answer any questions you may have, so let’s keep in touch.

Now, buying a house can be daunting if it’s a new thing for you, even if you have only done it once or twice.  Sometimes your last home purchase was with an inexperienced agent, or one that didn’t seem to understand your needs and help you get what you were looking for.

There are a few first steps to getting started.  One thing you need to know is how much house you can buy.  It’s good to know what you want, but you need to know – and as a REALTOR, I would need to know – how much you can afford.  Now if you personally don’t have a lot of money or your credit isn’t on par, but maybe your parents or other relatives are willing to help, that’s great and may vastly open your possibilities for a purchase.  But you do need to know what you are approved for if getting any traditional financing because it can affect your ability to compete with other offers.

Once you know what you can afford, we need to look at things like what areas you want to live in and how much house you want.  You want 3 beds and 2 baths, but do you have the space you need for guests and to be able to work from home like we all seem to find ourselves doing more and more these days?

Now that you know how much you can afford, and how much space you need, let’s get a search together that will give you live alerts on the market.  Zillow and Trulia are great but they’re not up to date.  I still get calls from people wanting to see a house that was sold last month.

When you go see a house, you need to be ready to offer, so you can be the first to the table.  So it’s good to get out early in the process so you can start refining your sense of what you will be happy with.  From there, once you get under contract, there are multiple checkpoints that your REALTOR can help with, in fact I have a step by step guide I can send you if you want to drop me a line at tnhomeagent.com and just ask for a “Buyer’s Process Guide”.  It’s something I send to all my buyers so they can keep up along the way because there’s a lot to cover in a relatively short time.

Which brings me to the timeline.  From the time a contract is bound, which means it’s agreed upon, the average closing is about 30 days.  That mostly depends on your lender, so this is something to consider early on as you’re getting pre-approved for a loan if you have a specific time period in mind.  I know that some of the lenders I work with can close in as few as 18 days, but I’ve seen 45 and 60 day contract terms as well.  Obviously sometimes there are unforeseen circumstances, but you can generally know how soon you can close in the beginning based on the agreement that is created.

If you have any more questions on this, or you’re just gung ho and ready to go, reach out!  Let’s get you started on your journey to buying your next, or your first home.