First Time Home Buyer Information

Getting Ready for Your First Home Purchase

If you are currently in the market for your first home in the Humble, Kingwood, Atascocita or Houston area, you probably have lots of questions. You are about to be making an important decision for your future, a great investment of both money and time. I have a wealth of experience helping first time buyers like you make sound, informed decisions.

Buyers Guide

To receive a copy of my Home Buyers Guide with helpful information about the home buying process, just contact me to request your FREE copy.

Professional Buyer Services

Be sure to visit my Real Estate Services page for additional infomation on working with you as your buyers agent.

First Time Home Buyer Tips

Here are some tips that can help make your home buying process successful:

Tip #1:

Do Your Homework. The perfect home won't find you by itself. The key step in buying a home is doing the proper research. Educate yourself on local schools, neighborhoods, and the kinds of homes available. By reading available material and talking with your Realtor, you can start to put together your idea of the perfect home.

Tip #2

Start Planning. Most decisions benefit greatly from proper planning, and home buying is certainly no exception. Start a filing system with sections such as home buying, home financing, and service providers. By forming a home buying plan you can easily focus on the most important factors and help give structure to the entire process. My website is a great resource for property information.

Tip #3:

Decide on Your Mortgage Type Deciding on the financing for your home can be as important as choosing the home itself. The first step is deciding what kind of loan best fits you: FHA, Conventional, VA. There are benefits to each kind of loan and your Realtor can provide your with more information and direct you to a reputable home loan professional. You can also find helpful information about the various loan types on my website.

Tip #4:

Get Prequalified Getting prequalified for a loan normally only requires a short phone conversation with a lender, and can greatly help your home search. Prequalification does not guarantee you a loan, but it does provide you an estimated monthly payment and price range to use as a guide when shopping for homes. Plus it helps eliminate surprises on items such as the property taxes and insurance that are often included in your payment. Being prequalified indicates to sellers that you are a serious, prepared buyer. More frequently, for security purposes, sellers are requiring in their showing instructions that buyers be prequalified before showing a property.

Tip #5:

Decide What You're Looking For Settle on the home features that are important to you (hardwood floors, architectural style, large kitchen, etc.) and make an ordered list. Having established guidelines will help narrow down your search and will prevent you from being shown properties that lack your key amenities. It can help you make the decision not to buy and attractive property that doesn't really fit your needs. My website has a search feature that allows you to filter thousands of listings based on attributes that you select. If you know your want a brick house that has gas heat and a three car garage, you can get the results you are looking for.

Tip #6:

Look for Value When shopping for homes, it's important to consider potential value. Even if you're not planning to sell the home some time own the line, it's a good idea to consider the future value of the home. Protect yourself against things like falling prices and gradual shifts in the nature of the neighborhood. You may not think of a new home as means to make money, but it's an important investment that requires caution.

Tip #7:

Relax You don't have to make an offer on the first home you see. Make sure to look a couple of other listings in the area to get a feel for the marketplace. When you decide to make an offer on a house, discuss the property with your Realtor so that all your questions are answered.

Tip #8:

Protect Yourself Be careful when signing a contract on a home and work with your Realtor to make sure it allows you to secure and finalize your financing, have the home inspected, and work through any problem areas that may arise. Paying for quality home inspections is absolutely crucial. You save yourself thousands in repair costs by being sure of what you're getting into.

I'm Here to Help First Time Home Buyers

Please contact me for more information about buying your first home. I'm confident that I can provide the kind of exceptional service that will make this process an exciting one ... just as it should be. Don't hesitate to contact me with any questions you may have, I would love to be of assistance to you