The Secret to Finding a Great Home with Little Hassle

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The type of home you can afford depends greatly on your financial obligations and your income. There are a lot of great tools online that will give you an idea of what you can afford, but the only way to know for sure is to meet up with a lender and go through the pre-qualification process. Doing this before starting a home search will ensure you don’t go out and find a perfect home, only to learn later that you can’t actually afford it. Additionally, a pre-approval makes your offer a lot stronger in the eyes of a seller. 

Once you’ve been pre-qualified, you need to start thinking about how you’re going to go about selling. Can you sell your current home and buy a new one at the same time? Obviously, the goal is only to move once, but making it happen is a tightrope walk. If you go ahead and purchase a home before you’ve sold your current one, you may over-extend your finances and put yourself in a tight spot. The other option is to sell first, but then you have to find a place to rent until you find a new home. Of course, you always have the option to put a moving contingency in your offer, but often sellers are not drawn to those types of offers.

A question that comes up a lot has to do with how many homes should be viewed before putting in an offer. Obviously, every buyer is a little different, but the average home buyer looks at about five homes before making a decision. The key is understanding what your needs and wants are, and also sharing that information with your agent. 

Once you’ve found the perfect house and your offer has been accepted, it’s important to get a home inspection. You have a right to a 10-day period where a professional will come out and take a look at all the major aspects of the home to take note of any defects. Buying a home is one of the largest, if not the largest, purchases you’ll make in your life, so the least you can do is invest a little bit of money in a home inspection.