Buying a home is a milestone in everyone's life. It symbolizes that you are independent and have achieved the stability of living a relatively comfortable life. Here are a few things you need to consider for purchasing your home.
1: Understanding Your Purchasing Power:
2: Getting A Pre-approved Mortgage:
3: Finding Your Dream Home:
4: Finding Your Lawyer:
5: Negotiating Your Offer:
6: Conducting Home Inspection:
7: Converting Your Mortgage Approval or Arranging Your Mortgage
8: Closing Your Home Purchase with Your Lawyer
9: Getting Your Home Keys and Happily Thereafter
1: Understanding Your Purchasing Power:
This is the first step to own your home. You need to do some home-work and understand your financial and family situations. Once you are sure that buying a home is the right thing to do, you need to start to find your dream home. However, before you start right from calling a real estate agent, it is a good idea to understand whether you can get a mortgage and how much you can borrow.
2: Getting A Pre-approved Mortgage:
Getting a pre-approved mortgage helps you achieve the following:
- you know your limit to borrow for your home;
- you know the interest rate you will get;
- you know your monthly mortgage payments;
- you also have locked your best rate for 120 days!
3: Finding Your Dream Home:
The key in finding your dream home is “know what you want and need“. You can find your home either by yourself through “Sell by Owner“ or on the Internet or through a real estate professional. Either way, you must know what you are looking for and the budget you have for your home. Expect the upexpected - you may spend some more on a home that you really love to have!
4: Finding Your Lawyer:
This may be the last step to some people, but Valueland recommends that you talk to a lawyer on things you need to pay attention to up front and find a good lawyer to work with. A good lawyer will help you avoid certain surprises towards the end of your home buying process.
5: Negotiating Your Offer:
To get your best deal, you need to work hard towards it. Sometimes, it may be a pure luck to get the house at your price expectation. Nevertheless, negotiate with diginity and reasons. Once you have settled the offer, you are happy to take away and start the next step. (Some buyers may have this buying syndrome - “Feeling bad about the accepted offer because I could offer less and it would be accepted as well“. Be happy, and you've got closer to your dream!)
6: Conducting Home Inspection:
Once your offer to purchase is accepted, you will arrange to have the property inspected. This inspection is to make sure that the property you purchase is good shape and its structure is sound. It may also point you to the areas for further maintenance work or areas of concern.
7: Converting Your Mortgage Pre-approval or Arranging Your Mortgage
At this stage, you may have already had arranged a pre-approved mortgage and want to convert it into a mortgage approval. At this point, you know that you have an offer accepted by the seller with a firm closing date. If you have not arranged a mortgage pre-approval, it is not a show stopper. The only thing you need to do is to contact Valueland and to get a mortgage approval. There are many ways that you can use to get your mortgage from Valueland.
8: Closing Your Home Purchase with Your Lawyer
Once you have your mortgage approved, your mortgage funds sent to your lawyer, it is time for you to get your down payment in place. A few days before your property closing date, your lawyer will provide you the amount of money he/she needs to pay the seller and government taxes, and certain insurance if necessary. You will need to send the money as a certified cheque or bank draft. Well, on the delivery of your down payment to your lawyer, you and anyone who will be on title of the property will have to be at the lawyer's office to sign all the papers. Be prepared that you will leave your lawyer's office with sour hands! (A lot of papers to sign.)
9: Getting Your Home Keys and Happily Thereafter
On the closing day, your lawyer will call you for you to pick up your home keys from the office. The property you have purchased has become your home since this day! It is a big day for you to celebrate. However, owning a home is not actually easy and requires you to do a lot more work than renting a home - financial budgeting including mortgage hunting, maintenance and gardening etc. At this point in time, the process is complete and you will live happily thereafter!