25 of my Most Learned Lessons when Buying a Home

 

Homebuying can be a stressful task especially if it's your first time like it was with us. We had a lot of learning to do! I thought today, I'd share what lessons I picked up from our house journey. We've been in our home a little over two years now and still there's much more to understand.

But, here's what I've learned so far:

1. Save some money for a down payment. In our case, we have a great lender who found us a program for first-time home buyers that gave us a grant to help us make a good down payment. But, if this was not our first time as a home buyer, with this market it would have made it impossible with our pre-approval to afford a home.
2. Have a good earnest money amount, but keep in mind that if you come under contract, there is a timeframe required if you have to terminate so that you don't lose your earnest money.
3. Do your due diligence. Learn the market. YouTube and searching the internet has a wealth of information. There's also organizations that can supply you with information about the homebuying process.
4. Don't skip the inspection. Some buyers do and I guess it depends on your situation. If you're a construction, builder specialist, you may not need to do an inspection especially if you're after a fixer and you intend to flip it. But if you're looking for a 90-100% ready-to-move-in home and you don't want or can't afford to do a bunch of repairs, you'll want to do an inspection.
5. Look for certain terms in home listings. If you see certain phrases, you can eliminate wasting your time if you're looking for specifics in home buying. 
6. Interview several realtors and lenders. Build a winning team that will fight for you and what you want. They're not in just for the money.
7. Learn all the stages of homebuying, there are a lot of steps and it's important to be familiar with the process.
8. Don't be afraid to ask questions. You'll feel like you're signing your life away with so many documents so if something doesn't feel right, ask. And don't be afraid to ask. It's your responsibility after all and you want to be sure you fully understand your rights and responsibilities.
9. Research options. Your lender and realtor should be helping you find methods to cut costs, lower the mortgage payment and watching the interest rates. But it doesn't hurt if you do some of that because after all, they have other clients they work for and they could miss something. So, with you researching, you can send them the info that they might miss.
10. Understand all the costs. Inspections for us is $400 per house, the appraisal is $966 per house and then to move into subdivisons comes transfer fees. For the grant we got, it is $75/year. There are costs involved for the buyer.
11. Don't put in an offer too fast. We made this mistake with the 2nd house out of fear that someone else would beat us to the punch and we didn't want to lose out on a house. However, it turned out the house needs a lot of work and we don't have the $$s to fix it to appraise. So, we terminated the contract which we're in our rights to do so. But, the sellers didn't sign the termination agreement and therefore our earnest money is held up and won't be released until they sign. If we hadn't jumped in so soon with an offer, we could have avoided this.
12. Take your time looking when you go see a home. This piggybacks on #11 because after we looked at #2 house, we didn't give ourselves enough time to think it over. We saw the problems, took many pictures of the flaws but it was our fear we listened to.
13. Create a snapshot of what the monthly mortgage payment will be and add on the HOA fee (if applicable). It's important once you have the loan disclosure that you go over what your expenses + income will approximately be after buying a home to see how much will be left each month. Do you feel comfortable paying these expenses? 
14. Save $$s throughout the entire process and afterwards. Repairs are on you, property taxes, home warranty insurance (optional), internet, electric and be sure to include other expenses that aren't monthly. 
15. Pay attention to your feelings. Throughout this process, if my heart began to doubt I had to take notice. Every house up till now didn't feel right and we decided either not to pursue or in the case of the 2nd house that needed more work, we had to terminate.
16. Don't bite off more than you can chew. Know what you can afford and when you're shopping for a home, have in mind how much you really can afford taking into consideration any repairs on the house that will need to be done, especially if those repairs are required in order to close.
17. Don't overthink. I have a habit of reconsidering my decisions and even backtracking. Remember the verse, James 1:8 KJV ~ "A double minded man is unstable in all his ways."
18. Organize your paperwork. You will get tons and tons of documents, be sure to organize them into folders and/or subfolders so that they're easily accessible.
19. Back up your documents. It's good to have your files in several places, I use the Cloud (Google) and a jump drive + I keep any attachments sent via email in separate folders.
20. Keep the communications going. I love that my team of realtors, lender, my hubby and I all are part of a text group so that we are all on the same page with everything going with the house. I also like that we are all responsive. This is one important point when we were interviewing realtors and lenders. Two of our previous lenders were not communicative unless we asked a question and their availability was splotchy too.
21. Don't get too excited in the shopping stage. It's easy to see the positives when you're house hunting but don't jump ahead. Take time to consider all the pros and cons before making a decision.
22. Study the inspection report. This is not a pass-fail process but it really is helpful to give you an overall condition of the house and what you'll need to keep in mind. There may be cosmetic changes you want to make and you can do that later on, but it's also good to know how well all the appliances are working and if there's issues you'll need to repair or replace sooner rather than later.
23. Don't delay with tasks. As you go under contract, there are tasks you have to perform within a specified timeframe. Try to respond so that all the steps take place in a timely manner to meet the closing date.
24. Keep your credit card spending to a minimum. During this process, your credit report will get hard pulled or sometimes soft pulls which affects your score but if you have rolling over balances, that might not look real good as your loan is with underwriting. I suggest if you must use your CC, to pay it off within 30 days or less.
25. Tax breaks. Discuss with your tax preparer if there are ways to help lower your costs or any write-offs that may benefit you especially if you're a first-time homebuyer.