The Home Buying Process and How to Get Started
By Shelby Montgomery | Published March 29, 2023
Buying a home is a stressful process, whether you’re a first-time home buyer or a seasoned-professional. There are so many moving parts and parties involved that it can be hard to know where to start. The following steps provide a basic road map to your home buying experience!
- Finding Your Budget. Finding how much you can afford is one of the most important steps in starting the home buying process. As lenders, we help you find what your Debt-to-Income ratio is and make sure we get to know you and your goals so you can afford a happy and healthy lifestyle.
- Getting Your Team Together. When buying a home there are multiple parties involved! You will need to find a trusted lender, agent, and title representative. Usually if you find one of the three, they will be able to offer wonderful recommendations to who can help with the other tasks. You always have the option of creating your own dream team, though, so make sure you shop around to find out who you’d like to help you!
- Starting to Look for a Home. After you have been Pre-Approved by a lender, you are able to go out looking for a home! This is often the most enjoyable experience of the whole process! One tip most agent’s give is to look at the bones of the house, not the makeup that’s painted over! You want something that is going to last you a while.
- Getting Your Offer Accepted. When you find a home you love, you’ll go under contract! That’s when your team keeps in good communication for your contract deadlines and makes sure everything is being taken care of. That is also when you should order a home inspection. These inspectors go through and look at everything! They will most often be able to tell you the home’s life span, and damaged areas that you’d need to watch out for. This is also when the lender will order an appraisal to make sure the value comes in where it needs to for the bank to be able to lend the requested loan amount.
- Closing Time! If everything goes well, we’re ready to close! The lender will be in communication with you to make sure we have all the required documentation to finish up the loan. Once we get the appraisal back and coordinate with the title company to make sure everything is where it needs to be we can get to celebrating at the closing table. After documents are signed by both the buyer and seller, we can fund and record the loan. BOOM. It’s yours! CONGRATS!
