Guide to Buying
FIND YOUR PERFECT HOME
Home Buying Process
1. Get Pre-Qualified - you have the option to talk to as many lenders as you want to get pre-qualified in the best program for you. Make sure to ask about any special programs that might save you some money. You can ask all of them to provide you with a good faith estimate which will break down the costs of the programs you have the options to use. Once you decide you want to move forward, you can do a pre-approval which will allow them to pull your credit and verify your income. At that point you’ll know exactly what you’re approved for.
2. Watch the market - while step one is taking place, watch the market. I have set you up on a search for the area’s we talked about so you can start to get an idea of what houses look like, cost and where they are. Then, when we are ready to start looking at houses you will have an idea of what a realistic house looks like in your price range and area.
3. Start to look at homes
4. Submit an offer - Once we see a home you like, we submit an offer. We tell the seller how much we are offering, what type of financing we’re using, and when we want to close. They can either accept, decline or counter our offer. We can discuss our offer price, based on the comps in the area and your interest on a scale of 1-10
5. Go Under Contract - Once we go under contract the process turns pretty methodical. We need to get an inspection done, the lender will order an appraisal and will gather lots of documentation from you to get full loan approval for closing. This process takes anywhere from 3 weeks to 6 weeks. You can ask your lender their time frame to close once you go under contract, they all have a different opinion on what a closing time frame should look like.
6. Closing - You will get a final settlement (called a CDC) 72 hours before closing to go over all of the numbers. If you and your lender approve that, we can close 72 hours later. Closing is at the title company (A title company is the closing service and they also provide you title insurance, which proves that the house is being sold to you by the actual seller and that there are liens on the house). We will go together and sit down to sign everything. The closer will go over all the documents with you, this whole process takes about 30-45 minutes.
7. Own your home!!! That’s it, you are now a homeowner!