When you finished college or began working, I'm sure you dreamed of one day owning your own place. Dreamed of having a place to call your own, with no landlord, room mates, RA's, or parents telling you to keep the place clean. Now that you have finished school and landed your dream job, your ready to say "sayonara" to that one bedroom apartment and start "moving on up to east side" so to speak.
First, there a couple things you will need to get in order. Before you start scouting for that mansion of a home, you will want to talk with your bank, credit union, or local mortgage lender to get a pre-qualification letter and price range. Some buyers may have a range in mind, but it really depends on the financing the bank will give you. There is no sense in looking at $1,000,000 homes if the lender will only give you a mortgage for $500,000.
After you have your pre-qualification letter, you can begin searching for homes (in your price range, of course)! This is by far the most exciting part of buying a home. The chance to scour your local real estate market, find the best deals, and ultimately fall in love with your new home. Hopefully by this point you are working a real estate broker. To be honest, you should find a real estate broker as soon as you have a pre-qualification letter, and send the letter to them straight away. This will give them proof that you can afford the homes you say you can, and also give the broker more information so they can find you homes to look at.
My biggest suggestion is to ask your broker if they have a MLS syndicated website that they can give you an account on. This will give you the opportunity to search the MLS, just like a real estate agent, in your spare time, and find homes to ask your broker about. I strongly advise to stay away from Zillow and Trulia for the first couple weeks of searching. These sites tend to have out of date or inaccurate data, and a Realtor's MLS syndicated website will be much more useful.
Some first time home buyers believe that this home is going to be their dream home, with fixtures fit for royalty and walk in closets you could get lost in. Just remember that 99% of the time, you are going to have to concede on one thing or another. It is highly difficult to find the "perfect" home that is in your head, so make sure you go into the home buying process knowing there will be some things you will have to do without.
Alex Vercheski
Keller Williams Realty of Greensboro
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/8678315
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