Buy Your First Home with Confidence
by
Larry Nielsen
Copyright 2012 Larry Nielsen,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-1259-7
Buy Your First Home with Confidence is protected by copyright of Larry Nielsen, 2012. No part may be reproduced in any form without the expressed permission of the author. Legal action will be taken against anyone found to be infringing on the author’s copyright. All rights reserved.
Introduction
Welcome to Buy Your First Home with Confidence!
I am excited for you that you have chosen to become a home owner and that you have chosen my guide to assist you in doing so. I want to reassure you that you’ve made a smart decision. Both in purchasing your first home and in seeking some guidance before you do.
First, a little bit of history. Why? Well, if we don’t learn from it, it tends to repeat itself. My journey started around 2008. I was living in an upscale apartment complex in South Florida. I had a top floor corner unit. I could open the windows and feel the cool breeze blow through. I was sitting on my plush and comfortable leather sofa watching my large HDTV. I had an expensive European luxury car parked outside. What a life!
The problem was that the apartment was costing me half of my monthly income in rent alone. The TV was purchased with a credit card. The car was another story. There goes another few hundred dollars down the drain each month on car payments, gas, insurance, and repairs. To make things even worse, the money I was paying to the apartment complex wasn’t doing anything for me. I mean it was enabling me to live in that place but that’s the extent of it. Basically it was lining someone else’s pockets and making them a little bit richer each day. Did I mention that I was thousands of dollars in credit card debt? Well, I was.
The day finally came when I realized that this was not the life I wanted to live. I didn’t want to “fake it ‘til you make it” anymore. I wanted to own my own home. I wanted that sense of pride, community, and respect that comes with the esteemed title of “home owner”.
I started to get my act together. I stopped using my credit cards. I started to pay them all off, little by little. I had to wait until the end of my lease to move out and avoid paying any penalties so I did that. I even sold that money-pit of a car. I had made a decision and I was going to make it happen, no matter what.
I moved out of that apartment, moved in with a buddy who charged me next to nothing in rent, and I started saving all that I could. While I was saving, I started researching the local real estate market. I didn’t tell you this yet, but I used to be a Realtor. I wasn’t anymore though and the real estate market changes every day so I had some research to do. I was talking to people I knew, driving around looking at the different areas and properties for sale, visiting open houses, and using the internet to search for available properties.
I wasn’t ready to buy anything just yet but I needed to know where I stood and what the current prices were. I worked with a couple Realtors, and one mortgage broker, that didn’t quite work out. I kept living cheap and saving money until I had enough for a down payment. I was also able to find a Realtor, through a personal referral, who was a hard worker and willing to help me find what I wanted.
It took some time, patience, and a lot of persistence, but I was able to find and purchase a home in a nice area and a fair price. My preparation, research, and determination along with my Realtors help allowed this to happen in a fairly smooth manor. I was pleased.
I wrote this guide based on the experiences that I had during that time of my life. It would have helped me a great deal to have this information back then. I am sure that it will help you.
This guide will provide you with advice and real life scenarios that you will be able to use as a starting point, to build a solid foundation, to have as road map to take you from where you are now to where you want to be; in your own home.
Let me go over some of the issues that will be covered in this guide and what exactly it means to own your own home.
To Rent or To Buy
There are many benefits to owning your own home. Some of which include privacy, freedom of choice, sense of community, security, and pride in ownership. When you own your own home you have made a big step in your life towards real independence.
I wanted to touch on that but I’m not going to harp on it because, if you purchased this guide, you already know that home ownership is they way you want to go. Good choice!
Why did I write this guide?
I wrote this guide to try to help people reach their goal of home ownership. I tried to write it in a way that makes reaching that goal as straightforward and easy as possible.
I wrote it leaning towards the use of a Real Estate agent (or Realtor) to assist you with your purchase. I also wrote it with the idea in mind that you will probably not be purchasing your first home with all cash. In other words, you will probably need to secure a home loan to purchase your first home.
There are many ways to purchase a home and I am not going to attempt to cover all of them in this guide. Some people like to use a Real Estate Attorney to help with their purchases and/or the closing of their properties. That’s fine too. I am just focusing this guide in the direction that worked for me.
I am going to tell you what I know from my own personal experience and knowledge and use the tips, ideas, and strategies that helped me go from being thousands of dollars in debt to almost debt free and a home owner in just a couple years.
What will you find inside?
The guide is divided into 7 different but equally important chapters discussing topics ranging from preparing your finances all the way to closing on your new home. I put the chapters in the order that you will most likely run into the situations contained in each one.
It starts out by helping you to get prepared personally and financially to begin the journey from renting or even living at home with your parents, to home ownership. As the chapters move along, you will find some bullet points, lists, real estate and mortgage terms, definitions, and other helpful information.
Each chapter will answer questions that you will most likely have throughout this process and will cover important points with some informative side notes mixed in. I will have a chapter recap at the end of each chapter to give you a quick overview of what you just read.
I will try not to use a too much technical jargon because that’s really not what this guide is about, but I will have to use a little. There are some terms, definitions, and explanations throughout. Don’t get bored! It’s all important stuff that you are going to want to know.
If you apply the principles in this guide, believe in yourself, and refuse to give up, I am certain that your dream of home ownership can turn into a reality much sooner and much smoother than you think!
Are you ready? Let’s go!
Chapter 1
Preparing Yourself and Your Finances
What’s your credit score?
Before