Real Estate Buyer Information
Buying real estate is one of the major purchase decisions of your life; therefore, it's important to be an informed buyer. The following information will help you better understand the buying process and assist you in your efforts. Knowledge is the greatest tool we have. You can never have too much when it comes to spending your money!
With that in mind unless you have cash, I suggest you get with a lender and figure out how much you can afford on your Real Estate adventure. E-mail or call a lender from the lenders page or your preferred agent. Most sellers believe you are a "serious buyer" when you make a offer with a pre-approval letter from a lender on home sales.
When looking to buy real estate in a new area, I suggest you take some time and go for the drive to get to know the area your interested in. It is also important to use an agent who knows the area; maybe they can send you in right direction and keep you out of areas you not interested in. Most of the time they can save you time by knowing what's ALL on the market and being able to listen to you when you describe your wants and needs for the property.
For Vacant or Bare Land buyers, the things you need to be concerned with are Easements/Legal access to the property and who has the right to cross the property, well log reports, utilities, has the property been surveyed and Zoning restrictions. These are the major factors for lenders and resale values. Being tech savvy I can also send you aerial maps of the properties you are interested in via-e-mail so you can get a better feel of the Land before you make the drive.
For Home buyers I think the most important thing is at least driving by all the homes in your price range before setting appointments to view the inside. Pictures are worth a thousand words but they don't always show the surrounding area.
Steps to Buy property:
1. Get a pre approval for a loan and/or figure out your $$$ Cap.
2. Select an area to buy in that suites your needs.
3. Get familiar with the area or town.
4. Get an agent to search with you through the properties and help refine your search to your criteria. Agents sometimes know things you may not have access to.
5. Take a drive by the refined search results, if you have not took a drive around yet.
6. Call your agent and get all the details you can on the properties you liked and ask about the ones you seen that were not on your refined list.
7. Have agent set appointments, if needed and view the properties.
8. Make an offer. go through negotiations (sometimes the most stressful part but hang in there and don't be afraid to move on to another property if you are not comfortable with the counter offer.)
9. After you get an accepted deal, you should get a title report from a Title Company, REVIEW THIS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This is very important!!!!!!!!! and a sellers disclosure statement.
*if you are a cash buyer with no inspections, you should be signing closing documents at this point and becoming a owner of real estate!*
10. For home buyer's, if you choose to have a Home inspection, appraisal & bank review for loan approval, you have some time to wait for these things to be done...
11. If things are a go after step 10, you will soon be the proud owner of a property with lots of documents to sign for your loan.
Good luck in your venture and the best advice I can give you is "read everything carefully and understand your offer and agreements."
Here you can sign up to receive email updates of all the new listings that meet your search criteria. This is the best way to get new listing notices. It is an automated system and your information is keep private. Please let me know if you are interested in previewing any of the Properties you see on my website.
I would love to get out of the office and walk some ground!!!
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