Are you looking to buy a home but don’t know where to start?
Step one would be to meet with a Realtor and a lender. The reason that you need to do both is that you can’t do one or the other without buying a house. If you meet the Realtor first they might connect you with a great lender, and vice versa. I encourage going with those recommended by either the Realtor or the lender, they are more likely to be someone with quality service, and in such an over saturated business you’ll want to look for those recommendations. There are some lenders that I will never refer to my clients because they are that bad. If you meet with me as your Realtor, I have a whole presentation on this buying process and I do go over a step on some financing, but I don’t go too in depth. The lender will help you see what interest rate you qualify for and with that information you will need your credit score. All of that is done to see what type of loan you qualify for.
The next step is going over your wants and needs with a Realtor. It is a large process and we funnel it down into bite size chunks. That is where a good Realtor comes in to help you with the process. There are so many ways you can go, new construction, existing, land, building from the ground up, ect. Knowing what your budget is and beyond that what you want your mortgage payment to be is important because what you can qualify for is a lot more than you might feel comfortable paying in your mortgage payment monthly. Make sure to prioritize what is important to you.
From there we come up with the time line. For example, if you are doing new construction we are talking about a 9 month timeline, so we will need to start a lot sooner. If you are wanting new existing then we can look at homes and go under contract fairly quicker. A lot of people come to me not knowing if they are going to build or buy so that is where we start out and how we determine the timeline.
I offer a free consultation going over the complete process from start to finish, reach out to me if you would like to connect and talk about your future home.
