Buyer Resources
Buying a home usually represents your single biggest investment
The home buying process is one of the most exciting, and frequently stressful, experiences you’ll ever go through. This holds true whether you’ve bought many homes or you’re looking to buy your first, whether you’re in the market for a new primary residence, an investment property or that perfect vacation getaway.
Define your goals, research your options, make your plans
Given that buying a home is such a big step, it’s very important to educate and prepare yourself as much as possible. This means clearly determining the reasons you’re buying and what kind of home you’re looking for. Since buying and financing a home are so closely related, it also means examining your current financial situation and projecting how much you can afford.
Once you’ve answered these questions, even tentatively, you’ll be in a better position to research housing and mortgage optionsand create an action plan and timelines for moving forward.
Contact a real estate professional
Buying real estate is a complex matter with many factors to consider since no two homes or transactions are alike. Moreover, with all the unique opportunities and potential pitfalls of the current market, it’s more important than ever to contact a real estate professional once you’ve decided to buy.
When choosing a real estate professional to guide you through the property search, financing, negotiation and transaction processes, you should consider their local market knowledge.
Get pre-approved for a loan
We recommend that you get pre-approved for a loan before you start viewing homes with the serious intention of buying. The pre-approval process involves meeting with a lender and authorizing them to examine your current financial situation and credit history. Based on this examination, the lender may provide you with a document detailing the amount you can borrow to buy a home. Consider looking online to see what different lenders offer or contacting your local bank or credit union.
The benefits of pre-approval
With a pre-approval, you’ll know what you are eligible to receive and be able to plan accordingly. As a qualified, motivated buyer you’ll be taken more seriously when you make an offer. Lenders can tell you if you qualify for special programs that will help you afford a better home (particularly if you’re a first-time buyer).
View homes and select ‘the one’
Simply put, the key to the home search process is knowing what you’re looking for. Among other things, that means distinguishing between “must-haves” and “like-to-haves”.
There are many benefits to starting the search process at a real estate website. You can view many homes and their details.
However, it’s also important to view homes in person. While the property details may seem similar online, homes can be very different in terms of layout, design, workmanship and other aspects. Ideally, you should view homes with the help of an experienced real estate professional who’ll notice things you might miss, provide expert analysis, and act as an impartial sounding board. We encourage our clients to attend as many Open Houses as possible—either physically or remotely. Real estate brokers are aware of prospective buyers’ health concerns in these challenging times. We stand ready to contact listing brokers in behalf of our clients to discuss steps they are taking to ensure compliance with best practices.
Make an offer and negotiate with the seller
Once you’ve found the home you’d like to buy, it’s time to make an offer. We use standard contracts developed by the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. These contracts enable you to specify a sale price and allow the inclusion of clauses specifying various terms of purchase, such as the closing and possession dates, your deposit amount, and other conditions.
We will carefully review these documents with you to be sure that they accurately express your intended offer.
Once you’ve written the offer, we’ll present it to the seller and/or the seller’s broker. The seller can accept your offer, reject it, or counter it to initiate the negotiation process.
Successive counteroffers, with deadlines for responding and meeting conditions, may be exchanged between you and the seller until a mutual pending agreement is reached or the negotiations breakdown.
We will coordinate our work with your attorney throughout the process.
Secure your financing
Once you have a pending agreement, it’s time to return to your chosen lender to finalize mortgage details in order to close the deal. This means finalizing your down payment, interest rate, regular payment schedule and all other financial conditions associated with the closing. Key steps to the closing, also referred to as the “escrow” or “settlement”, include getting a title search – you will need a historical review of all legal documents relating to ownership of the property – to ensure that there are no claims against the title of the property. If you obtain financing it’s also necessary to purchase title Insurance for protection in the event of errors in the records or mistakes in the review process. If you are a cash buyer, you are not required to purchase title insurance, but we strong recommend that you do so; discuss this with your attorney, who can explain how title insurance works and the risks you may incur without it.
The final walkthrough
You will be given the chance to look at the home one last time to make sure it’s in the same condition as when you signed the sale agreement.
The settlement
Typically, on the Closing Date you’ll meet with your lawyer, or escrow agent to verify and sign all the paperwork required to complete the transaction. The settlement will include paying your legal fees, property tax and other adjustments. At that point, you’ll receive the property title and copies of all documentation pertaining to the purchase.Documents can also be processed without a face-to-face meeting.
You can usually take possession of your new property once the deed is recorded.
Responding to COVID-19
The real estate industry has been a leader in technology adoption and innovation. Although we recommend that you do not place an offer on a property you have not physically toured and inspected, you can handle much of the process remotely. For example, we and many brokers produce ‘virtual tours’ you can view on a PC or mobile device; instead of spending a Saturday afternoon traveling from home to home, the ‘new normal’ may involve sitting in your living room and using Chromecast to take virtual tours.