Your Real Estate Agent

Hire an agent that you could work with and someone who’s going to work with you. A lot of real estate agents will seek to make the quick sale and before you arrive at their office, they are going to pick 10 to 12 properties, encourage you to cut the list down to 6 or so, bring you out to see the houses and try to get you to buy one.

How about doing something different? See the real estate agent at his office and do a 20 to 30minute consultation. Work with the real estate broker to determine what it is you are searching for and anticipate as a minimum in your new home. Have the real estate broker type in your criteria into a VIP Buyer database where the real estate agent will send you regular emails with properties that meet your specs. You drive around these neighborhoods without the agent. This way, you’ll be able to get the genuine feeling for the area and you can decide if that place is adequate enough for you. When you have seen the perfect neighborhood, you take the real estate broker out and have him show you the house you chose. You are in charge, not the real estate agent.

Mortgage Pre-Approval

This procedure is a component of the broker interview. You can go online or do a phone call application with the mortgage company prior to going to the agent. In any event, pre-approval is the first step in what price home you could look for. Start with a pre-approval on a regular 30-year or 40-year fixed rate loan; this is going to be your base. Having a reserved, more realistic starting point will let you to stretch for a more expensive house if you choose. By not setting out with ARM or interest only, you have elbow room for the extras when you compare homes. As an example, if a thirty-year fixed mortgage lets yous acquire a $130,000 home and the ARM is going to let you get in a $145,000 home and the interest rate merely gets you a $160,000 property, you have the choice. Remember this is your first home of several more you’re going to own later on.

Should You or Should You Not Stretch?

You’re pre-approved and found the right neighborhood. How much money do you want to pay for a new home? You know what the mortgage company will allow you, but will that still leave you enough money to go on summer vacation every year, weekend getaways, New Year’s Eve in Times Square? Will you be able to furnish the new home the way you want to or will you have to wait or start scoring credit card charges? This is where the crucial question comes, if you stretch and stretch too far and something happens like loss of a job, illness, company retrenchment, no promotions or salary increases that you will need because next year, your mortgage payment is going to increase. What do you do? Things could happen and they do happen to good individuals each day. That is just something to think about.

There are thousands of properties to choose from in each marketplace. Choose the one that fits you best; select the one you could afford this year and the following year year in addition to all the other things you would like to do.