When it comes to buying a home, you’re likely overly excited to look at the properties available in your market. Most of the time, homeowners find themselves overly concerned with each home’s curb appeal and interior design that they tend to overlook key items. We’re going to discuss four aspects of buying a home that many homeowners overlook so that you can learn which key items to pay more attention to on your next home purchase.
The Inspection and Appraisal Process
Once you walk through a home and fall in love with it, you’ll likely want to get the sales process underway as quickly as possible. However, it’s important to understand the key components of a home inspection and an appraisal. Most lenders won’t require a home inspection to be performed. But, this is a great step for any homebuyer to take to ensure they know exactly what is wrong with the home. The appraisal, on the other hand, is typically required by the bank so that they can properly access the value of the home. If the appraisal doesn’t come in at what you’re purchasing the home for, you may find yourself trying to renegotiate a price or paying the difference out of pocket.
Finding a Good Realtor
Before you even start to look at properties, you should concern yourself with finding a great realtor. Many people get stuck on looking at homes that they settle for just any real estate agent that they can find to do the transaction. It doesn’t take a lot of work for a agent to show an initial property. However, the best Realtor in your hometown will have skills that ensure a smooth purchase throughout the entire process. You won’t know how great a particular realtor is at negotiating, answering phone calls, and so forth until you do a little research to find out.
Finding a Great Lender
Many times, people will just rely on the knowledge of their realtor to find a lender to fund their new home purchase. While realtors do have a list of lenders, their companies tend to only work with specific ones. If you want to have better odds of finding a great lender, then it’s a good idea to do some research of your own. You want to find a lender who doesn’t charge an application fee, is available for funding in your area, and offers competitive interest rates.
Heating and Cooling System Functionality
Since most people don’t spend a whole lot of time learning about home HVAC systems, they tend to mainly ignore them during their showings. As long as it sounds like it’s working, then all should be good. That’s actually not the case. Just because an HVAC system is functioning doesn’t mean that it will be for long. It’s best to have it checked by a professional to learn how much longer the system will last before it needs to be replaced.
When buying a home, there are many aspects to consider. While it’s easy to skip over some, you should be careful not to skip over the ones above. These will highly alter your ability to purchase a good home that you can live in for the long-term.