Buying your first home? Just the thought is enough to send shivers up your spine. Where do I start? Lenders? Who do I call? Sales contract? Earnest money? Escrow companies? Title insurance? Counter offers? Addendum's? Inspections?. Just a few of the real estate questions that I will answer.
Where do I start?
When my wife and I bought our first home it was stressful. We had a good real estate agent, he answered our questions and was helpful throughout the process. So the best place to start is to get a competent, reliable real estate agent.
Who do I call?
I hope you would call us here at Eugene Oregon Real Estate Homes. There are three of us, and we are all independent real estate brokers licensed to sell real estate here in our Great State of Oregon! We pride ourselves on returning phone calls, emails promptly and getting you into your new home. We work most weekends and evenings and yes we are competent, reliable real estate agents. Our Number 1 goal is to make sure that we lookout for your best interests throughout the transaction.
The next thing you want to do is get pre-qualified. Why do I say that? I have shown clients homes before they were pre-qualified and come to find out that they couldn't afford that home. Its very hard to get back in the mindset of a $200,000 home when you were looking at $250,000 homes. I strongly encourage you to get pre-qualified.
Now what?
What we would do is set up an appointment, have you come in the office and we would discuss your real estate needs. We do have two conference rooms with big screens and we could look at all of the homes currently on the market (that are listed on our local rmls). After we narrow the search to the homes that best suit your needs, we would embark on a new adventure. I have on occasion taken clients out and they fell in love with the very first home we looked at. If not we can continue the search until we find that special home that is out there.
We find the home, we want to make an offer,where do we go from here?
We head back to the office and we start writing that real estate contract and fill in the blanks. We also fill out an inspection addendum, if we have a lot of requests a real estate addendum.
How much do we offer?
A lot of factors go in to deciding how much to offer. How long has the home been on the market? Whats the neighborhood like? Whats the condition of the home? One thing I would do is, do a comparable market search to see what homes have been selling for. Of course the number one question is "how much do you want the home".
And then?
We send over the offer to the other agent, he takes the offer to the seller, who either accepts, rejects, or counters. Of course the best is acceptance! I have had situations where we have countered back and forth numerous times and have taken up to two weeks just to get a accepted contract! I have also had contracts that were started and closed in 11 business days. Usually if you make a good offer we can open escrow within a couple of days.
The Inspection period
The majority of the time the buyer pays for the whole house inspection. The seller pays for the pest and dry rot. On average a whole house and pest and dry rot will cost about $340 for a 1000 sq ft house. It takes roughly three hours to complete and then we wait for the report. After I get the real estate inspection report I will sit down with you and discuss it with you. I have yet to come across a report where there wasn't at least one thing that needed to be addressed. If there is I will fill out a repair addendum and fax over to the listing real estate agent. This is called the inspection negotiating period.
In the meantime escrow is still moving along, the appraisal is being set up. When we finally agree on repairs and who is going to pay for them, (usually the seller) the listing real estate agent will have a licensed contractor give an estimate and repairs will start. After the repairs are completed and providing they meet our approval we should receive a signed 3rd party repair agreement stating that the repairs were completed by a licensed contractor. We would then sign a contingency release for the repairs.
When the appraisal is done and hopefully it will be at the selling price or higher, the mortgage broker in turn will send it to the lender, and we wait for final approval. After we get this we then go to the escrow company and sign. The Escrow officers will go over this with you very carefully and will walk you through the whole process.
Where's the key?
Its not quite over yet. We have to wait for funding from the lender, and then we have to wait for recording. After those two final things are accomplished we get the key! You are now homeowners!
DISCLAIMER: Sean Guerrero disclaims liability for any damages or losses, direct or indirectly that may result from use of or reliance on, information contained in the blog or for accuracy of comments or opinions of visitors to my blogs.
