buying a home

Buying a home can be one of the most exciting and terrifying processes of a person's life. It's imperative to us that each of our clients feels comfortable and in-the-know throughout their entire home buying process.

Please check out our "6 Simple Steps to Buying a Home" guide below, complete our "3 Minute Buyer's Worksheet," or schedule a free consultation and a member of our team will follow up with you shortly.

#1 - call a realtor® And Mortgage Lender

The best place to begin your home-buying process is by speaking with the two people who will guide you from start to finish - a Realtor® and a mortgage lender. The Realtor® will help you find a house, and the Lender will help you pay for it, so it really doesn't matter which of these people you call first.

The buying process involves a lot of money and a lot of emotion; you'll want to make sure you choose people you both trust and like.

If you'd like to call a lender to see how expensive of a home you can afford, we recommend calling Ann Dain with Caliber Home Loans as a great place to start. She'll help you out.

#2 - begin your home search

Your Realtor® will use the financial info provided by the lender to refine your home search parameters based on price, bedrooms, bathrooms, location, and host of other criteria. At RAGE, we have access to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) that provides verified, precise, up to the minute info on every home placed on the market.

Then, the fun begins!

Now is your chance to go to open houses and visit homes with your Realtor® in anticipation of finding the home you love! For some people, they find the perfect home their first day, for others it takes a few weeks or months. Our desire is that you find the perfect home for you, no matter how long it takes

#3 - place an offer and Go "under contract"

When you find the home you love, our team will submit your offer to the sellers. The sellers have the option to either accept, counter, or decline your offer. If they accept, you are officially "under contract" and we begin moving forward with next steps. 

If they counter, that means they are requesting that you change some terms of your offer, and if they decline, we continue with Step #2.

The timeline from going "under contract" to taking official ownership of the property generally takes 30-45 days.

#4 Inspection

As a buyer, you have a right to have the home inspected by a licensed home inspector and the sewer line scoped to ensure it's not broken. The job of the inspector is 1) to make sure the home doesn't have any health and safety concerns and 2) to notify you of any "problems" with the home - whether it be a dead outlet or a roof that needs replacing. 

The inspector will provide an exhaustive color photo report of all his findings and email it to you, the buyer. There will likely be 20-30 problems identified - this is normal. The key is to look for major problems that can be remedied or will have a negative long-term impact on the liveability and value of the home. A member of our team will give you a call upon receiving this report to walk you through it.

As a buyer, you have the right to ask the sellers to repair certain items. The buyers can say "yes" or "no." Once an agreement is reached regarding these repairs, we move on to Step #5. 

If no agreement is reached, the contract will be terminated and we return to Step #3 and search for another home.

#5 - appraisal

After your inspection report is received and an agreement is reached with the sellers, the bank will send out an appraiser to the property to verify it's worth the purchase price (the bank doesn't want to give a $250,000 loan on a home that is only worth $200,000). 

Ideally, the appraisal reports that the home is worth at or above the purchase price. If this happens, we move on to Step #6.

If the appraisal comes in below the agreed upon purchase price, one of 4 things must happen. 1) The sellers must either agree to lower the purchase price to match the appraised value, 2) the buyers must agree to pay cash for the difference between the purchase price and appraised value, 3) the buyers and sellers each compromise and meet somewhere in the middle, or 4) the contract is terminated, the home goes back on the market, and you, the buyer, start again at step #3.

While all this might sound complicated and overwhelming, at RAGE, our team will be communicating with all parties to keep the process flowing smoothly and make sure all questions are getting answered in a timely manner. 

#6 - Closing

This is the day you've been waiting for - the day you assume ownership of your new home! 

Closing is the appointment when both the buyers and sellers meet at an office of a local title company, along with their Realtors®, the loan officer, and a representative from the title company to get final signatures and complete the sale. Over the course of an hour, all the legal paperwork gets signed, keys are exchanged, and the home ownership exchange is made official! 

No further action is needed except for you to enjoy your new home and live your dream!

Still have questions? Schedule a meeting with our team!

* By their own admittance, generic home value (z)estimates provided by sites such as Trulia and Zillow can often be off by as much as 20%. The sites can be helpful when looking at homes, but since you're likely looking to buy a home, this type of information can cause less-informed home buyers to have a distorted understanding of the market - leading to unnecessary frustrations and missed opportunities. Our goal is to find you the perfect home for the best price possible. If you find a home you like on Zillow, Trulia, or other online site, let us know and we will be happy to help provide verified information.