Buying a Home: The Hunt
Ahh now the fun part. After getting pre-approved and having a good idea of what you can afford, you finally get to start viewing homes! When my husband and I started looking, we just began our search online. We did not initially have a real estate agent. There was a good site for our area that listed all homes in surrounding areas for sale by realtors. After finding a house we really like online, we contacted that home's selling agent to show it to us. Yes, you CAN just contact the selling agent to show it, but be cautious that their job is still to sell that home. They won't point out any negatives. The agent that showed us the first home we saw really didn't say much at all-he just let us wander and make our own comments. After viewing the house twice, we decided we wanted to put in an offer.but how?
Because this was our first time trying to buy a house, we knew we couldn't do it on our ownthere's just too much legal mumbo jumbo. There we're 2 options that we considered. We could either go through the selling agent and have him act as our own (representing both us and the seller) or find our own agent. The problem with dual representation, like I stated above, is that the agent's primary goal is to sell that home. Although they are legally supposed to have both parties' best interests in mind, they won't make commission unless that house is sold. We thought that by using the seller's agent we may not get as good of a deal. So, we decided to get an agent of our own. Luckily some friends of ours had just bought a house and had a great agent that they recommended to us. He was SO helpful. We viewed the house again with him and he pretty much gave us a mini home inspection. His comments and advice we're extremely helpful. He also guided us as to what he thought a fair offer would be.
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One thing that I was afraid of when getting our own agent is that we would have to pay him commission. This typically is not the case. Our agent actually gets paid by the seller. So, when we we're to buy a home, that seller would pay their selling agent a percentage as well as our agent (usually 3% each or a minimum amount for cheaper homes). Pretty nice for the buyer, right?
After finding ourselves an agent and a home we liked, it was time to make an offer. Basically, you decide on an offer price and go into your agent's office to draw up a contract. You provide your pre-approval letter as well as earnest money. Our earnest money was $500. This is held in a bank and is basically a sense of insurance to the seller. If you we're sign a contract to buy, the seller took their house off the market, and then the deal fell through, they would receive the earnest money as compensation for time lost. If the deal goes through, your earnest money is applied towards your closing costs. In the contract you list your offer, what you want included with the home, and when you want to close.
We we're never able to strike up a deal on this first house though. The seller would NOT budge from the asking price. The home had been on the market for over a year, and the seller was gradually lowering the price as time went on. We made 2 offers and he never once countered with anything other than list price. Frustrating! We decided to just drop it. We could have easily afforded the home at asking price, but that fact that the seller was so stubborn turned us off. If he would have countered with even just $1000 off, we may have agreed.
Soooo back to searching.which was made easier now due to the fact that we had an agent. He knew our price range and would email us new listings daily that met our requirements. We viewed a handful of homes with him until we found another one that we liked (our current home!). It is really important to view homes in person, and not necessarily judge them from what you see online. I actually was not impressed by our current home based on it's online listing. There we're very few photos and none of them looked all that great. However, because it met our requirements (price, 2 bedrooms, lake view, etc) we decided to see it anyways. As soon as we got back in the car after seeing it, I knew it was a top contender.
So we put in an offer! This time the seller worked with us. He countered with only $1000 more than what we offered. DEAL! We accepted.
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Article Inspirations
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Posted in Real Estate Post Date 11/03/2023