Finding Your Home

Understand that buying a home, unlike most things in life, is a process of elimination, rather than selection. When buying a car for example, you can select the make, the model, the color, and just about every feature you want, as long as it fits into your budget.

When buying a house though, you’re limited to whatever is available at the time. That’s why people often say “I spent more time searching for a tool set than I did looking for a house”. As long as you have your “why” set firmly in your mind, you’ll know which house is for you minutes after you’ve walked through the front door.

Focus on the Things You Can’t Change

Because your options will almost certainly be limited, there are only 3 things that you should key in on when searching for a home…location, lot size and features, and square footage/floor plan. The first 2 of these can never be changed, and the last one can rarely be altered without spending 10’s or 100’s of thousands of dollars.

You may find you’ll regret buying a house that’s too small for you just because it has granite countertops and shiny floors, but if the size and floor plan work, you can always add those things later.

Things such as paint colors, fences, floors, kitchen finishes etc. can always be changed or added later, don’t let them cloud your judgement or cause you to ignore the big 3 and find yourself calling me in a few years to start the process all over again.

Making an Offer

Here’s where the heartbeat speeds up and the nerves start to rattle a little. Not only are the stakes monumental, but the process itself can seem confusing and overwhelming. Good news is, while the emotional part of the equation is inevitable, the details and the paperwork side of it are much simpler than people believe.

In fact, it is extremely simple, and when you think about it, with thousands of transactions taking place all over the country every day, they need to be, in order to keep things moving.

As long as you have a good realtor working on your behalf, the only thing you need to concern yourself with, is knowing that you want to live there, and knowing what the max you’re willing to pay is…which I will help you with.