Buying
Your Home
Congratulations, you’ve taken the first step and decided to start buying a home!
The home buying process is complex, takes time and it’s easy to get off track. Staying true to your needs and priorities is essential in finding the best home for you and your family.
I am here to help make this experience as enjoyable and stress-free as possible. My goal is to help you find a home you love, with all of your needs and as many of your wants as possible, and at a price you are comfortable with. I look forward to working with you and being part of your journey!
Home is the starting
place of love, hope
and dreams.
Steps To
BUYING YOUR HOME
01
START YOUR RESEARCH EARLY
As soon as you can, start looking at websites, reading newspapers and various sources for listings within your area that you plan on moving to. Make a note of particular homes you are interested in and see how long they stay on the market. Also note any changes in asking prices. This will give you a sense of housing trends in specific areas.
DETERMINE HOW MUCH HOUSE YOU CAN AFFORD
Lenders generally recommend that people look for homes that cost no more than three to five times their annual household income if the buyers plan to make a 20% down payment and have a moderate amount of debt.
02
03
GET PREQUALIFIED & PREAPPROVED FOR CREDIT FOR YOUR MORTGAGE
Before you start looking for a home, you will need to know how much you can actually spend. The best way to do that is to get prequalified for a mortgage. To get prequalified, you just need to provide some financial information to your mortgage banker, such as your income and the amount of savings and investments you have.
Your lender will review this information and tell you how much we can lend you. This will tell you the price range of the homes you should be looking at. Later, you can get preapproved for credit, which involves providing your financial documents (T4 statements, paycheck stubs, bank account statements, etc.) so your lender can verify your financial status and credit.
SHOP FOR YOUR HOME AND MAKE AN OFFER
Start touring homes in your price range. It might be helpful to take notes on all the homes you visit. You will see a lot of houses! It can be hard to remember everything about them, so you might want to take pictures or video to help you remember each home.
04
Make sure to check out the little details of each house. For example:
- Test the plumbing by running the shower to see how strong the water pressure is and how long it takes to get hot water.
- Try the electrical system by turning switches on and off.
- Open and close the windows and doors to see if they work properly.
It’s also important to evaluate the neighborhood and make a note of things such as:
- Are the other homes on the block well maintained?
- How much traffic does the street get?
- Is there enough street parking for your family and visitors?
- Is it conveniently located near places of interest to you: schools, shopping centers,
- Restaurants, parks, and public transportation?
05
GET A HOME INSPECTION
Typically, purchase offers are contingent on a home inspection of the property to check for signs of structural damage or things that
may need fixing. Your real estate agent usually will help you arrange to have this inspection conducted within a few days of your offer being accepted by the seller. This contingency protects you by giving you a chance to renegotiate your offer or withdraw it without penalty if the inspection reveals significant material damage.
Both you and the seller will receive a report on the home inspector’s findings. You can then decide if you want to ask the seller to fix anything on the property before closing the sale Before the sale closes, you will have a walk-through of the house, which gives you the chance to confirm that any agreed-upon repairs have been made.
WORK WITH A MORTGAGE BROKER TO SELECT YOUR LOAN
Lenders have a wide range of competitively priced loan programs and a reputation for exceptional customer service. You will have many questions when you are purchasing a home, and having one of our experienced, responsive mortgage bankers assist you can make the
process much easier.
Every home buyer has their own priorities when choosing a mortgage. Some are interested in keeping their monthly payments as low as possible. Others are interested in making sure that their monthly payments never increase. And still others pick a loan based on the knowledge they will be moving again in just a few years.
06
07
HAVE THE HOME APPRAISED
Lenders will arrange for an appraiser to provide an independent estimate of the value of the house you are buying. The appraiser is a member of a third party company and is not directly associated with the lender. The appraisal will let all the parties involved know that you are paying a fair price for the home.
COORDINATE THE PAPERWORK
As you can imagine, there is a lot of paperwork involved in buying a house. Your lender will arrange for a title company to handle all of the paperwork and make sure that the seller is the rightful owner of the house you are buying.
08
09
CLOSE THE SALE
At closing, you will sign all of the paperwork required to complete the purchase, including your loan documents. It typically takes a couple of days for your loan to be funded after the paperwork is returned to the lender. Once the check is delivered to the seller, you are ready to move into your new home!
Home
LOAN TIPS
Step 01
Start saving for a down payment
This one is really important and sometimes not everyone is as planned as they would like to be. The best thing to do is to determine how much you think you want to spend and do your best to put away a monthly amount that you can use towards your down payment. There are so many great tools such as budget calculators that will help.
Step 02
Check your credit score
Having a good credit score puts you in a position to attract the best deal on your home loan. So it’s a good idea to obtain a copy of your credit report before starting the home buying process. You will see what your credit profile looks like to potential lenders and can then take steps to improve your credit score if necessary.
Step 03
Utilize a Mortgage Calculator
Mortgage calculators are great tools for helping you understand how much home you can afford. They are very easy to use and can show you how much your monthly mortgage payment would be under different home price, down payment and interest rate scenarios.
Step 04
Start tracking interest rates
The interest rate will be one of the biggest factors in determining the cost of your mortgage. Interest rates for mortgages change almost every day and it is helpful to know which way they are heading.
Step 05
Get pre-qualified
Many real estate agents want you to be pre-qualified for a loan before they will start to work with you. The mortgage pre-qualification process is fairly simple, usually just requiring some financial information such as your income and the amount of savings and investments you have. Once you are pre-qualified, you will have a better sense of how much you can borrow and the price range of the homes you can afford.
