Hire a real estate agent. They get paid from the sellers, and having someone who knows the process is massively helpful.
All good advice here.
Find a good agent to represent you.
Get pre approved by your potential mortgage company.
Have a decent down payment in cash ready.
Never ever ever ever sign a deal with a per diem penalty. No matter what.
Make sure you understand what your taxes and insurance will be. Also check for FEMA flood maps. My home had a paved patio and 6 inches of it touched a XX flood zone, they wanted 15k a year for mandatory flood insurance. I took a sledge hammer to the concrete and poof, no more flood insurance requirement.
What the current resident pays in taxes is NOT what you will pay…research it.
Don’t buy a house within 1 block of a school …school traffic is terrible.
Get a full inspection…not just what’s required.
Good luck
WDYM I can’t just go to Costco, they have everything!
Just throwing this out there in case anyone needs actual advice:
One option is to sign with a buyer’s broker. A real estate agent that works for the buyer rather than the seller. That’s what my wife and I did when we bought our house almost 29.
The real estate fees of 6% are paid by the seller and split by the seller’s broker and the buyers broker, and the buyer’s broker has a fiduciary responsibility to the buyer
Our broker, Gary, made sure we understood everything that was happening and made sure we didn’t screw up.
I definitely recommend it for anyone buying a house for the first time. It doesn’t cost you anything as the buyer, and it doesn’t increase any costs for the seller.
Oklahoma made a law that now it does cost you. The buyer has to pay their own realtor fees and commission.
Bummer. That sucks.
Well apparently we had a lot realtors ripping off sellers so now we all suffer. The new buying laws is everyone pays their own realtors sellers and buyers.
If you have the money it’s actually quite easy because there are lots of people happy to sell you a house on commission.
If you’re poor then go fuck yourself I guess?
if you’re poor then go fuck yourself I guess?
Seems to be a common theme
It’s hard in nice/desirable areas because the rich people make all-cash offers, and sellers prefer that over people that will get a mortgage.
Why does that matter to the seller? They get that amount in cash anyways. I guess the risk if the mortgage falls through? But then they keep the earnest money.
Any offer that relies on a mortgage will have a clause indicating it is conditional on the mortgage coming through. A buyer would be insane not to do this unless they have the cash anyway. Even if it is a preapproved mortgage, there’s always a chance that something can go wrong.
But you have to put up your earnest cash within a few days.
But you don’t have to do that with a buyer paying with cash.
Plus the closing timeline is much longer for a mortgage vs cash
On top of that it takes 30 to 45 days to close. Where cash they close right away.
Why the rich landlords are buying up all the homes in the area. I got lucky to buy my home.
Yeah, there’s no risk of the mortgage falling through, and not as much dealing with banks. I don’t really know the specifics but it was something I had to be aware of when buying my house. Luckily I was buying while it was a buyers market a few years ago, so prices were lower, fewer people were looking, and there weren’t any competing all-cash offers.
There is a risk of the mortgage falling though if there’s an issue with the inspection or survey, or if the buyer does something stupid like taking out loans before the sale is finalized.
In fact, I got my house because the previous buyer’s mortgage fell through. Mine almost fell through because it was only a 17 day closing and apparently it was survey season. Had to pay triple to get it expedited.
We found it pretty easy… I guess I do live in one of the cheapest towns in the region though.
One way to start could be to go to the Open Houses in the area you live as well as where you want to buy. You’re not just looking at the houses, you’ll also meet some realtors, and if there’s one you like, you can hire them to help you through the process. Be sure to check out the neighborhood at various times of day/night/week in case of red flags.
If you are rich enough, you don’t buy a house, you buy a plot of land, you then contract an architect to help you plan the house to your liking, after that you get a contractor who helps you build the house.
Only poor people buy houses second hand!
…unless they are REALLY fancy, then only rich people buy the houses.
Hey… rich people buy houses too! If they want the plot of land beneath it they just rip out and replace the house with something fancy
For us that was actually cheaper than buying a house. Granted, pricing probably varies by region, but generally construction costs are nowhere as high as existing house costs, so if the plot doesn’t cost too much, it’s viable alternative in many places
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squatting
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_possession
Might become the only way.
I mean that is how it works if you can buy it in full with cash. If you can’t then it’s an unpleasant process that ends up costing far more.
You either look for house listings and contact the realtor selling the house (be wary of contract for deed sales, it can sometimes be a great deal as the owner is cutting out the middleman but it’s just as often a scam or otherwise legal nightmare), or you look for an empty residential lot and then buy a home to be brought in on trucks and come in various sizes and shapes: singlewide, doublewide, multiwide. You can also purchase homes from a plan and have it built on the spot.
In almost every case, part of the process is getting approved for a home loan. Homes costs vary widely and can be anything from $60,000 to $6,000,000 USD, your monthly payments will depend on the interest rate and term on the loan and might be anywhere from $900 to $59,000.
There are many cases where buying a home makes more sense than renting: you acrue equity which becomes profit when you eventually sell the home. The downsides, though, are that it can become difficult to leave once you have the responsibility of a home and the liability of losing your investment if anything ever happens to the home. If a home isn’t built to last then it could become worthless before you ever get a chance to flip it.
I really want to buy a house so I can have a place of my own that’s in my name only. That way, if I ever get divorced, it would still be mine. After the honeymoon, I’ll start looking into it, and my husband will pay for it.
For me it was the opposite. As a married couple we had a house almost paid for. But then in the divorce we both had to get large mortgages again.
I bought out her half of the house and now have a mortgage as big as our initial starting price 20 years ago, that doesn’t get paid off until I’m like 80. So that didn’t work so well
Of course now I also have enough equity to buy a house in most of the country. So there’s definite upside
You want your husband to buy you a house to keep after you divorce him?
Yikes.
Of course. I’m young, I don’t work, and I have to look out for myself. I already received a substantial mahr when I got married, which I gave to my family to invest since I’m not knowledgeable about that kind of thing. I also had it written into my marriage contract that my husband must deposit a set amount into my personal savings account every month, among other provisions. Saudi Arabia is a man’s world, women have to be smart if they want to thrive.
Don’t worry about it :)
Thats actually exactly what you say
