A.D. Cantelmo Property Management
Our Business is Property Management in Orange County California
How to start the home buying process
As a Property Manager, I understand the desire for Tenants
to be want to buy their own home and when I have a great Tenant I encourage
them to buy. Many times a Renter, if they do their due diligence, they will find
that their monthly cost may not be that much more to buy, then they are paying
to rent. I also understand the ambivalence to buy. The responsibility of home
ownership is enormous and the stress can be much more then if you rent. I talk
to many renters who are very comfortable renting and have no desire to buy a
home.
If you do decide that this is the time for you to buy a
home, and you are a first time buyer, let me give you a few pointers that may
help you make a good decision, and, make the process a little smoother.
I had a
client once, and their lender was telling them how wonderful the home buying
process is going to be for them. She told them that the loan process will be
stress free. She worked for Bank of America, and as soon as they told me what
she said and who she worked for, I knew that they were in for a rough Time. In
the end, B of A would not do the loan for them, and we had to rush and find
someone else. That being said and I have said this before, once you decide to
buy a home, your first stop must be a lender. You should shop around, but you
want to find out what you can afford, and get the pre-approval in place before
you start to look at homes. Remember a Pre-qualification is meaningless, you
want a pre-approval. The difference is that with a pre-qual, they are only
taking your work for information, a Pre-approval is where you turn in all your
information and the lender goes through the process of verifying the
information and finding the loan that works for you. I like a mortgage broker
who can offer you many different products.
Once you get your loan in place and you are comfortable with
the price you are willing to pay for a home then the next step is to find the
area you want to live. Once you decide on your area, then get on the internet
and find out if the prices in the area are in your price range and if the area
you want to live in is more expensive then what you are comfortable spending
then find another area, do not increase your price that you will pay.
After you have a good idea of where you want to live and you
are comfortable that the prices in the area are in your price range, then find
yourself a good Realtor. What do I mean by a good Realtor? In my business of Property Management in Anaheim, Ca. I meet many Realtors and so many of them just show people everything that is on the market. You do not want
someone who is going to drive you around all day on Saturday and Sunday and
show you 10 or more properties at a time. A good Realtor is going to sit you
down and spend quite a bit of time with you to find out what you are looking
for. Then after they have a picture of what you want, they need to get in
the car and start to pre-screen the properties on their own time.
Most of the
properties they will be able to disqualify without you wasting your time. When
they find the few properties that has what you are looking for, then they
should call you and you should meet them at the property as soon as possible preferably
the same day. Once you have decided to buy then there is no reason to limit
your property searches for the weekend. You are going to want to see a property
at different times of the day, so if your first look at the property is at night, that’s fine, if you like it, go back the next day for another viewing.
Do not fall into the same old looking at property after property. The Realtors
job is to show you homes that you want to see, not show you every home on the
market. So a good Realtor needs to do the ground work for you and keep you up
to date of the homes they looked at and why there is no reason for you to see
them.
You need to be smart when looking at homes. If you look at
home after home, you will have a hard time differentiating between them. Let
the Realtor do their job and earn their money.
A.D. Cantelmo Property Management Specializes in Property
Management in Orange County Ca.