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Health & Fitness

7 Proven Strategies to Help You Buy Your First Home

There are plenty of reasons to buy your first home: pride of ownership, mortgage interest deductions, property tax deductions and capital gains exclusions to name a few.

Despite the difficulties in obtaining financing for a home purchase, there are great rewards for those who dare step into home ownership. You will need a couple of qualified people to help you navigate through this obstacle course: A Lender and a Professional Realtor. Open your eyes to today's opportunities in San Leandro! Here are 7 proven strategies to help you navigate to a successful home purchase.

  • Begin by gathering all your financial documents first. You will need among others: current pay stubs, copies of tax records from the last two years, recent bank statements for all your accounts, copies of Divorce decrees if applicable. If you have funds in CD's or 401Ks or other income, you will need to bring copies of those documents too. 
  • The next step is to talk to a lender about your finances. Find out what you qualify for, how much money you need to have for a down payment plus closing costs. You can do this by simply asking your lender to do a pre-qualification for a loan. After this meeting you should know what your price range is and how much your monthly payments will be.
  • Make a list of what is important to you and your family when is comes to housing. Do you really need to have 4 bedrooms?  is a pool an absolute necessity? Keep in mind that the First Home is not exactly your Dream Home. Buy below your maximum qualifications if you can, that will leave you room to save money by applying a small amount each month to the mortgage payments to reduce the principal amount borrowed.
  • Meet and interview a local, Professional Realtor. Choose a person that specializes in the area that your are interested in. You can do a lot of research on your own online, but a professional Realtor's help is absolutely necessary. Remember this: Realtor's commissions are paid for by the home seller. There is no cost to you when you buy a home. Use his knowledge and expertise... for Free!
  • There will be other professional trades people that will get involved in a typical real estate transaction. your Realtor will assist you here and on your behalf, he/she will contact home, roof, termite and other inspectors. The lender will take care of having the house appraisal done for you.
  • Once you have made an offer on a house, you will make a cash deposit into a title insurance company. This neutral company will not only run an escrow for you, it will also ensure the title of the house in your name after escrow closes and you become the new owner of the house.
  • Read and understand all documents handed to you and the time elements involved during the transaction. The more you know the better it will be for you. if you take these steps in order, once you have picked the right house and made and offer that has been accepted, you will have about 30 to 40 days before you can get the house. If the house, however, is in a short sale, it might take months before you can close the escrow and call that home your own.

 The cycle of real estate will continue, just as when prices went up and then come down, we will see in the near future this trend reversed. Buying a house in the long run is far better than renting.

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