Have any questions?
Finding the perfect house on your own is not easy - choose Erik Henson, the agent you can trust.
Here’s how the buying process works from start to finish.
- Do some preliminary online searching - Check into what homes are selling for in the areas you’re interested in to give you an idea of what you’re looking for. This will help later on when communicating your wish list with your real estate agent.
- Take care of the budget - Use our online mortgage calculator to determine what your monthly mortgage payment would be if you were to purchase one of these homes you’ve found online. Make some additional estimates for utilities, taxes and see if this fits into your budget.
- Get pre-approved - To get pre-approved for a mortgage you’ll need to get some paperwork ready: pay stubs, W-2s, 1099's, bank account statements, tax returns for the past two years, any open credit lines, and names and addresses of your landlords for the past two years. Make sure to get the best mortgage loan rate by shopping around lenders.
- Look at homes - Be patient at this stage. Giving Erik detailed feedback so he can show you homes that are perfectly suited to you. Sometimes, this process can take months or years—So be patient.
- Make an offer - Once you’ve found your dream home, you may want to move quickly. Your agent will guide you on a reasonable first offer to start negotiations based on market conditions. Also, make sure you consider closing costs which could account for 2-5% of the home price.
- Negotiate - Erik Henson will be your advocate and try to get you my client as much as possible for your money while being fair and respectful to the seller and their real estate agent.
- An accepted offer - If you reach an agreement, you’ll make a deposit to an escrow account to show good-faith.
- Do a home inspection - Even if the home appears to be flawless, there’s no substitute for having a professional inspector review the property for quality, safety, and general condition of your potential home.
- Title Search - The title company makes sure that all necessary documents have been properly executed and makes all the appropriate disbursement of funds to insure that at the completion of the transaction, the buyer receives good and marketable title to the property.
- Funding - Once written commitment from a lender is given and/or funds are wired to the title company closing will take place.
- Closing - At your closing, you’ll spend a little over an hour signing lots of paperwork and then will be handed the keys.
