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What First Time Home Buyers Must Do When Viewing Potential Houses
You are a first-time home buyer, and you’ve been through decision-making and loan pre-qualification processes. You know the type of home you can afford and what you need in your home and have selected a RE agent to help you to procure it. Then, you are about to begin the most interesting and entertaining part of your home hunting process – viewing your future homes. Before you start, you have to prepare how you would manage it. Without a good preparation, it could turn out to be a disaster filled with disappointment and exhaustion.
Your agent may already have emailed you home listings that suit your home buying criteria. But, you are probably also want to find homes on the web. While you will probably find the homes that your RE agent already emailed to you, you can also see what any other homes listed in the neighborhood. Then you pick the homes that you like to check out and call your RE agent for showing schedule.
Some buyers, especially the first time home buyers may think viewing homes is the same as seeing movie. All they carry with them are their car key and some cash. While it is perfectly fine, you can better prepare for your visit. Thus, you will save time and energy, and be more efficient in hunting for a right home.
Here are some suggestions you may do when you are viewing your future homes. First of all, bring the items below with you:
- Home features comparison chart
- Flashlight
- Measurement tape
- Clipboard
- Digital camera
- Notepad
- Pen
Don’t check out more than six homes in a day. Otherwise, rather than a fun thing to do, viewing homes becomes boring and confusing. When you are being at a home, take many pictures to help refreshing your memory later. But, only taking pictures without organizing it will do no benefit to you.
For every home, begin with taking pictures of the street number, the front view and the main entrance. Then, take minimum 1 picture of the kitchen, living room, family room, each bedroom, bathroom, hallway and stairway. You might also take pictures of any details, such as granite counter, hardwood floor, vault ceiling and walk-in closet, etc. After checking out the inside of the home, you can start taking pictures of the backyard and the rear view of the home.
After that, you probably think you finished. No, you haven’t done yet! You also should take pictures of any defects that may affect your desirability of the home. Pay attention to the places below the kitchen sink, around toilet bowl and shower area, gutter and garage walls, etc. Those places are easy to get damages from the water. To take pictures of defects is particularly important if you are buying foreclosed houses as there will be very limited property disclosures from the seller.
When you leave the home, you may also want to take pictures of the street and the neighborhood. Don’t overlook, you are not only buying the home, and you are buying the neighborhood as well. Make sure you are comfortable with the living environment and feel safe walking down the street.
When you check out the next home, you take pictures in the same steps. Thus, when you download and look at the pictures on Sunday morning with your wife, you recognize all the pictures belong to a same home after a street number.
At this moment you may ask a picture worth a thousand words why I should bring the notepad, features comparison chart and pen. The notepad is for jotting down the impression you may have on the home that picture cannot tell. The features comparison chart is for recording the features and conditions of the six homes in a table format that is easy to reference and compliments to the pictures. It can help you focus to make a more accurate decision.
Some homes may not have enough lighting, especially at the basement and storage areas or vacant homes. It is always good to take a flashlight with you. Lastly, you may have a favorite oversize dining table and want to make sure your new home has enough space for it. It would be a disappointment to find out you could only keep your dining table in the garage when you move in your new home. Obviously, that is why you should bring the measurement tape. Therefore, measure everything that might affect your moving plan.
Last but not the least to mention that if you are a home buyer for the first time obtaining down payment assistance from the government, you should also pay attention to any non-permitted addition on the home. Normally, down payment assistance would not be approved on those homes with non-permitted conversion.
Always be prepared, organized and focused when viewing your future homes can save you a lot of time, energy and frustration, and make it a truly enjoyable home buying process.
For more information on Home Buyer, Down-payment Assistance and Buying Foreclosed Houses, please visit us at RealEstateNotebook.net