House Hunting Begins

House Hunting is definitely stressful - no matter what anyone tells you! I'll try and walk you through the process and we go through a series of mistakes and successes. Fortunately my uncle is a realtor, so he has been able to coach me from another state on the general process. The first thing you need to do when going to look for a house is to get pre qualified for a home loan. Essentially you should get 3 (THREE) pre qualifications to see which company gives you the best deal. It is suggested to do a commercial bank, one of the large banks (Wells Fargo/Bank of America/Etc), and one of your choice. The one we decided on of the three was Fidelity. The lady we are working with just turned out to be the most responsive and educational with us. For the pre qual you will need your W2's, a pay statement, your bills, and bank account statements (a few other documents will be needed based on the company). After they have made their calculations, you will receive a letter stating how much you qualify for and this amount should be what you base your home search on!

Ok, now that the pre qual has been taken care of you can find yourself a realtor. Now, I cannot explain perfectly the difference but I will try to explain my understanding... there is a difference between real estate agent and realtor. A real estate agent is working trying to sell as many houses as possible. A realtor has gone through extra training and has signed a national pledge to be customer focused. So yes, a realtor is also trying to sell houses but they are doing it on the interest of the customer. A realtor is also typically paid by the seller not by the buyer.

We found a local realtor who has so far been phenomenal. She definitely has my interest in sight and does what she can to put me first. The realtor will send us links to houses and we converse about homes until we schedule a date to go out to see them.

After we find a home she will take care of all the paperwork and we just sign the documents. Stephanie is also very good at explaining what things are. Especially with my uncle being so far she is easy to get in touch with and explains what different loans are, what escrow is, what we need to be looking for, and explaining the rest of the process.

We had our first outing with her last week. The houses progressed from worst to best. The worst - well one room had a dog locked in it, and I am pretty sure the dog was never EVER taken out... The second was a nice layout but the kitchen was outdated and the carpet/tile... well it was in the wrong decade for sure! The final house was perfect by far, especially for our price range. We put an offer but as everything, it was too good to be true. Someone had put an offer before us and we lost the house.

Scott has drill for the Army this weekend and won't be in town. My parents and I are going to do a preliminary drive around to see what other houses are available and taking lots of pictures. We will see what we can find before going out with Stephanie again next Wednesday! Maybe we'll be able to put in another offer!