Top 10 Things You NEED to Know About Buying a House (#10)

Like I promised, I'm going to follow through and write a "Top 10 List of Things You NEED To Know To Buy a House". I'm really excited to share our ups and downs, our advice, our shortcomings, our successes, and just basic things to hopefully help someone else who's in the process or considering taking the plunge into buying a house. Buying our first home was a HUGE learning experience and test for us and we feel like we passed and came out more informed about how the world works.

I hope this blog and list can serve as some solid truth and advice for you :)

"The Top 10 Things You NEED 

to Know About Buying a House"

10. Get a Realtor.

This was foundational for us. We got our Realtor's information from friends and this was the groundwork for deciding to buy a house. Even before we knew that we wanted to buy a house, we contacted Judy, our Realtor, to get an idea of how the whole process works. Just and FYI- Realtors get paid off the seller's side's closing money, so having one to buy a house is FREE to the buyers. They make commission off the purchase of the home and get paid from the closing, so it's of no expense to you to get a Realtor :) (don't quote me on every bit of this, but it was definitely our experience!)

My first phonecall to Judy was a shot in the dark. I called her and asked her for instructions on what to do every. step. of. the. way. My controlling, Type A personality wanted to know EXACTLY what to do to get the process going. 

Judy instructed us to set up a meeting with the bank/lender to get Pre-Qualified for a housing loan. From there, we knew what our budget was, so looking at homes was realistic for what we could afford. She also told us some of the upfront costs we could expect (I'll talk more on that later) and gave us a thorough timeline of what the process of purchasing looks like.
Judy was a key piece of our home-buying process and I'm so thankful we chose to have a realtor to work on our behalf to make our house ours!

Stay tuned for #9 (SHOP SMART)...