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What should I know about buying my first home?
We wanted to discuss this with you as you may have this question in mind and you’re looking to buy your first home. So, I want to just briefly go over some of the key points of some things that you should keep in mind as you’re exploring this option for yourself. The first thing is, what are your goals and your budget? For example, with goals, what do you want to accomplish with buying a home. Are you looking for more stability? Are you needing to move more often? Because we want to make sure that if you’re buying a home, that it’s a commitment for you, you’re planning on being there for quite some time.
And then budgeting, of course, as we’re talking about home values and pricing and everything there, as well as what it’s going to mean for you when you buy your first home in terms of upkeep, some of the maintenance, some of the things that you may not have had to pay for without owning your own home. So, these are some of the things that we would talk to you about as you’re preparing. You would be working with a real estate agent, so when I refer to talking with us, you’d be talking with one of our real estate agents. Now, the real estate agent services are free where the seller actually pays for the buyer’s real estate agent as long as it’s being purchased through the local MLS, the Multiple Listing Service, because those commissions are predetermined and pre-agreed upon with the seller’s agent.
Working with a great real estate agent will help you understand the process more. Then, you’ll have a lender and a loan process. You’ll be working with a lender, having a process of understanding what your down payment funds requirement will be. You may have access to some grants, where they can reduce the amount that you would have to put down, or even in some cases, eliminated. Understanding what the closing costs are. Now, there are some cases where the seller will pay for your closing cost. What a closing cost would be is for the lender to originate the loan, process it and to fund it, they have the cost. They need to be paid for some of their services there, and so there’s always going to be some closing costs. Again, like I mentioned, some first-time home buyer grants are available, so we want to make sure we’re talking to the lenders about that.
And then, understanding the process a little bit more in depth. Now, you can watch some of our other videos that talk about the process, helping you understand what type of an agent you want to be working with, some of the things to watch out for with lenders and with real estate agents, making sure that you’re just as informed as you possibly can be. So, I hope this is helpful on a very high-level basis, we’re happy to help you out.