The Buying Process

Our Goals:

• To give you the greatest exposure to the marketplace in a timely fashion.
• To provide you with professional knowledge and experience to assist in your decision-making.
• To make your purchasing experience smooth and hassle-free.

Pre-Approval With a Lender:

• This is the first and most important item to complete.
• Review your financial situation, and decide how much home you can afford.
• Choose a loan product.
• Get a pre-approval letter to submit with any offer that you make.

Your Needs:

• We will get together with you to discuss what is important to you about a future home.
  • We will discuss your "must-haves," "don’t wants" and "would love to have if we could" items.
• You will refine these choices as you begin to look at houses.
• We will discuss what is important to you when working with an agent.

Looking for a Home:

• A first step is to set up an auto-e-mail notification feature, available with our multiple-listing service.
  • This will e-mail you updates for any new listings that meet your search criteria.
• We will schedule showings for homes that meet your search criteria.
  • We typically will keep the showings to fewer than 6 per day.
• Initially, we may look at some homes that are just under your price range and just above your range, so you get a feel for trade-offs.
• We will help identify features that will help you with future resale value.
• You might find the right house on the first trip out, or it could take several trips.

Making an Offer:

• We will look at comparable homes in the area and give you an idea of whether the home is priced correctly.
• We will discuss "fair price" and offer price.
• We will fill out a purchase agreement together (approximately an 11-page document that will take 1 to 2 hours to complete).
• We will discuss and determine the primary negotiable points: earnest money, closing date, personal property, closing costs, arbitration, timelines, etc.

Submitting the Offer:

• We will present the offer to either the agent and sellers, or the agent.
• The sellers can accept, reject or counter the offer.
• The process can go quickly (the sellers may immediately accept your offer), or it can take a few days to work through a negotiation.
• Once you (the buyer) and seller are in "verbal" agreement, the purchase agreement will be changed (if necessary), and both parties will approve changes with final initials and signatures.
• Short sales and foreclosed properties have a very different process.

Inspections:

• Your offer was most likely written "contingent on inspection."
• Once the offer is accepted, the inspection timeline begins.
• We will recommend a good inspector for you to hire to inspect the home.
• The inspection is important for two reasons:
  • First, we want to uncover any hidden faults (health and safety related) in the home, which could cause you to "rethink" your offer.
  • Second, an inspector will give you great information about how to care for your home and what to plan for regarding home maintenance.

Sale Updates:

• We will keep track of all aspects of the transaction from the time of an accepted purchase agreement until after the closing.
• This will include communicating with the other parties involved in the transaction, such as the lender and the title company.
• We will continue to stay in contact with you (the buyers) during the "pending period" to keep you informed and up to date.

Final Walk-Through:

• We will complete a final walk-through of the home together prior to closing.
  • Generally, we will try to schedule this for the day before or the morning of the closing.
  • The purpose of the walk-through is to ensure that the home is in the same condition as when you made the offer.

Closing:

• The buyer, seller, agents and closers will meet at the "closing table."
• Closing will take about an hour.
• All documents will be signed at the closing.
• At the end of closing, you will receive the keys to the house, and you will legally take possession of your new home.