Hassle-Free Homebuying
by: W. Troy Swezey
Perhaps you’d like to take advantage of today’s great
real estate market in housing but feel a little intimidated by everything
that’s involved.
You know the routine: finding the right locale and the right house;
negotiating an agreement; putting together a down payment; and selecting
the best mortgage available.
There are two things you can do to make every step run smoothly.
The first is to select a really professional agent who knows the
real estate business, knows your local market, has both a solid reputation
for integrity and a solid record of success, and clearly is eager
to respond to your needs.
The second is to make your agent your teammate
in the literal sense of the word, using teamwork to be sure that
the house you ultimately
buy is the house you’ve always wanted.
Making your agent your teammate requires choosing
an agent you feel able to trust both as a person and as a professional.
And that’s
no small matter. In real estate as in all areas of business – as
in all aspects of life, actually – trust can make all the difference
in the world.
True teamwork is nearly impossible to achieve
unless you stick with one agent throughout the buying process.
By all means you should
shop around – and shop around carefully – when you’re
still deciding which agent to work with. Once you’ve made that
decision, however, don’t reverse it unless (and this rarely
happens to people who are careful in the first place) something specific
happens to make it clear that your choice was unwise.
Teammate status is all the motivation a first-rate
agent needs to go all-out in finding houses that suit your needs.
And if you’re
concerned about what it is you’re looking for and how much
house you think you can afford, your agent can save you huge amounts
to time and effort.
If you’re not sure how much you can
afford, be candid with your agent about that, too. He or she can
provide you with some helpful
preliminary guidelines and can put you in touch with mortgage lenders
who know how to get you focused on an appropriate price range.
It’s always a good idea, as you look at listed homes, to give
your agent a lot of feedback on what you’ve seen. Good feedback
will refine and sharpen the agent’s understanding of your likes
and dislikes, which in turn will make it easier to find the house
of your dreams.
The ultimate payoff, once again, is that you get to your goal more
quickly, expending less time and less effort along the way.
Anyone who have ever done it this way will assure you of one thing:
it pays off.
Mortgage
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