First Time Home Buyer Tips

You know want to buy a home — you’re just not sure where to begin. And no wonder: Buying your first home can be a long, intimidating process, full of gross stuff like math, legal documents, and cutthroat competition. But have no fear: First-time buyers just like you do it all the time, and we’ll walk you through the process. First, you’ve got to make sure you’re emotionally and financially ready to buy a home.

If you’ve had enough of your roommate eating your leftover take-out, your absentee landlord hiking the rent year after year even though the heat barely works, or your mom asking what time you — a full-grown adult the last time you checked — will be home, you might be dreaming about buying your own place, and doing it sooner rather than later. But how do you know if you’re ready to buy a home, and whether it’s a good idea? There are various rent vs.

Open houses are kind of fun, aren’t they? There’s something interesting about walking through a home and trying to picture yourself living there. However, when you’re serious about getting into the real estate market, it’s time to take this experience to the next level. Here are our tips for buyers on getting the most out of open houses. Keep these in mind the next time you’re in the mood to take a tour and you’ll be an open house pro before you know it.

For most of us, buying a first home is a pretty big deal. We’re all indoctrinated from a young age with the more romantic aspects of becoming homeowners, making it hard to imagine when we purchase that first abode that we’ll ever live anywhere else. But think of it this way: Wouldn’t it be nice to know that when it does come time to sell your beloved first home, you’ll be walking away with a nice chunk of change to put toward your next dream house?

If you’re looking into buying a home, your mind is probably focused on things like your down payment and monthly mortgage costs, but those aren’t the only costs that come with owning a home—there are hidden costs you might not be thinking about, too.

The wrong real estate agent—or just one who doesn’t jibe with your vibe—can cast a shadow on your whole home buying experience. That’s why it pays to know what things to look for (and the right kinds of questions to ask) when searching for a reliable real estate agent. So to help make your search a little easier, we called on William E Brown, President of the National Association of Realtors (NAR), for advice on how to find the best agent for your unique homebuying needs.

Online mortgage programs are becoming increasingly popular — and it’s not hard to see why. With an application process that takes less than five minutes, they can almost be thought of as an “express lane” for a loan. But while some prospective buyers, particularly those who have been through the process before, may appreciate their speed and ease, those same features can feel overwhelming to first-time buyers.

You can read a million lists about buying a home—and I could prattle on for days about the process myself—but the best advice anyone can probably offer is this: buy a home in a city that you love even more than the house itself. Never does this ring more true than when it comes to outdoorsy people.

You’ve heard it before: “No house is going to be perfect. Even your dream home will have a few compromises.” That’s true. When you’re house hunting, it’s important to keep an open mind rather than getting stuck in one vision of what you’re perfect home will look like. However, there are a few instances where it’s okay to put your foot down.

When you’re a first-time home buyer growing dizzier by the minute walking through dreamy homes outside of your budget, it’s only natural to consider adding a home that needs a little “TLC” to your short list. Know this, though: fixer uppers come with some special considerations, especially for first-time homebuyers. Two years ago when my husband and I decided to take the plunge and buy our first home, we settled on a fixer upper.

There is so much that’s confusing about the home buying process as a first-timer, and all I can really do (beyond writing articles like this one) is absolutely promise that an attentive real estate agent and a knowledgeable mortgage broker will be your lifelines. You’ll be surprised how much you learn about earnest payments, escrow and amortization in that month or so it takes to close. Definitely more than you paid attention to in college accounting, I’ll tell you that much.

Contrary to what some might believe, avocado toast isn’t what’s keeping Millennials from buying houses—rather, a shortage of affordable homes is stopping prospective homebuyers from their purchasing dreams, no doubt combined with things like student debt (according to Forbes, more than 44 million people face a total of $1.3 trillion of student debt, more than any other kind of debt, outside of mortgages).

An online listing for a house is a lot like an online dating profile. You wouldn’t ever lie — better to set honest expectations — but you sure as hell are going to make your situation look as good as possible. That means flattering angles, ruthless editing and, yep, maybe a little Photoshop. If you’re browsing home listings to find your dream home, here are a few things to be wary of when it comes to real estate photography.

A (sort-of-serious) theory: The ease with which you can get around your city without a car is inversely proportional to how easy it will be to get your hands on real estate. When you live in a massive metropolis with a few million other people, trains can be easy to come by, but affordable starter homes are not. But if you know that homeownership is something you want for yourself—and you’re not willing to move out of the city to do it—all hope isn’t lost.

Finding an affordable rental anywhere in New York City is a struggle, so it may feel like buying a home in the Big Apple for less than a fortune is near-impossible, if not completely. The truth is, you can find apartments in the city that are more on the affordable side, you just have to do a bit of searching to find them. These apartments are all $300,000 (or just below in price) and give you a taste of what’s out there and what buying in New York City is really like.

You might rent an apartment in a big city and you love it, but that doesn’t bar you from imagining yourself in all sorts of alternate timelines. Maybe there’s one where you’re living abroad, one where you’re living in a tiny little town in the middle of nowhere, one living on a your own private island — big and small, you’ve entertained thoughts about all of them.

Older generations always seem to think millennials are doing it all wrong, but the truth is, millennials aren’t all that different from their grandparents—especially when it comes to buying their first homes.

If you lustfully dream about getting out of the rental game—to have creative control over your space or just to stop “throwing away money” every month—you’ve no doubt given some thought to whether it’s cheaper to rent or to buy where you live. It’s easy enough to search out a couple of listings on Zillow to give yourself a quick answer, but the truth is there are lots of unexpected financial effects to weigh—on both sides.

The reality of owning a home isn’t as simple as it used to be decades ago. Many first-time home buyers are now waiting longer than they ever have, around six years, before shifting from being a renter to being a home owner. (And rates of homeownership are down further than they have been in nearly fifty years.) For many potential home buyers, unsurprisingly, the down payment is their biggest obstacle. Housing prices have gone up while household income has remained relatively stagnant.

Before you’ve done something, it’s pretty hard to know what you don’t know. When it comes to the complicated, terrifying steps required to buy your first home, there’s a lot of opportunity to not know. First-time home buyers Tiffany and Alan Goldstein bought a cute, chic Austin bungalow — and learned a few things about buying a home in the process. Build a budget so you can set goals. If you can’t afford a home right now, don’t force it.

Anastassia Nelson recently purchased a 925 square foot 1920s bungalow in Tacoma, Washington, and spent a year renovating the house into a stylish cottage full of vintage finds. And Ana was only 25 when she became a homeowner. Are you impressed? I’m 33 (not a homeowner) and very impressed. Ana was kind of enough to answer some questions about how she bought a home while still in her twenties, from how to know when she was ready to how long it took to save up for a down payment.

New to the home-buying process? If you’re ready to start looking for your dream home—or if you’re just looking to learn more about how buying a home works for the future—there’s a lot you’ll need to know. The process is long and can be as stressful and confusing as it is exciting.

Wooed by its close proximity to our favorite beach, my husband and I bought an older home in Charleston, SC, last spring. One year and tons of cash later, we’ve learned the hard way that it isn’t always the big, glaring problems with older homes that’ll bite you right in the butt—er, budget. In our experience, it’s the little red flags that sneak up and rob you blind before you can close the front door.

Whether you’re looking for a home right now or plan to be on the hunt some time next year, don’t just stumble into a house hunt unprepared. While the process is exciting, there might be a few things you want to make sure you have on hand during the search so you can hunt for the home of your dreams smarter.

We’ve learned the hard way that there are some very important things that should be checked before signing the papers to buy a new home. Of course, you’ll have a professional do an inspection and look over the place to make sure the home is termite and flood damage free, but these ten things fall into a different category; the immediate to-do list, which is something you may not want to be adding to right now.