Wednesday, July 15, 2015

The Details of Making an Offer on a Home

With financing in place, a great home located and preparation for placing an offer beginning, the often lengthy process of purchasing a new home approaches its successful completion. The remaining steps are legally important for protecting your own interests and ensuring that your dream home won’t become a nightmare following your purchase. From contingencies for issues that present themselves following an accepted offer to price negotiation, ensuring a fundamentally sound offer on a piece of property is the best way to complete a successful acquisition of a new home. So, what are the most important details to keep in mind when drafting an offer on the perfect home for your needs? With the help of an experienced real estate agent, you can submit an offer with full confidence, knowing that you’re legally protected throughout the final purchasing procedures, and by remembering to study the following details, your offer will have a great chance of kicking off a successful end to your home hunt.
With the help of your real estate agent, performing a comparative market analysis (CMA) is a great way to find an estimate of the fair market value of the property upon which you’ve got your eye.

According to Front Door, there isn’t a more reliable, widely used mathematical method of estimating a property’s true value than a CMA. By distilling all of the most important characteristics of your potential property, including bedrooms, bathrooms and square footage, into quantifiable statistics, you’ll have a much clearer indication of the true value of the property before submitting an offer. Instead of focusing on asking price, use comparable properties that have recently sold in the area to determine an offer. Luckily for inexperienced buyers, real estate agents have access to all of the databases and records needed to get incredibly accurate home value estimates while protecting tight budgets.

Take a look at the market in the area to have a better idea of market conditions. If you’re in a buyer’s market, big savings could be available when making an offer.

Speaking of comparable properties, studying market conditions before putting in an offer is essential to getting the best value possible. In a seller’s market, you’re likely to find competition on great properties. As a result contingencies and concessions may need to be eliminated in order to make your offer more favorable. Conversely, buyer’s markets are great to see when you’re making a home purchase. In this case, housing inventory outweighs buyer interest, and you’re much more likely to have offers below list price accepted without a bidding war. Ask your real estate agent how to shape your offer to match market conditions, and you may find savings that you didn’t know were possible.

Each seller is different, so there is no ‘one-size fits all’ solution to creating a successful offer. Depend on the experience of your real estate agent to make sure your offer shines, and never attempt to make an offer alone.

According to Fox News, gathering available information on the seller of your potential home could be a great start to making a sweet offer. For example, if a property recently held an estate sale, chances are high that a quick closing may be more important than meeting list price. In any scenario, doing some detective work on a property could help you guide your offer more precisely. Avoid insulting homeowners with low-ball offers and excess criticism on a property to which they may have sentimental attachment. Since sellers have no obligation to take the lowest offer on the table, details are important to improving your chances. Again, the experience of real estate agents is invaluable to getting the property of your dreams.

Keep emotions out of the negotiating process. If the seller has unrealistic expectations of the value of their home, don’t hesitate to walk away from a deal instead of overpaying for a piece of property.

After an exhausting home search, it can be difficult to separate emotions from business when putting in an offer on a property. While some negotiation is almost always necessary with initial offers, remember your budgetary restrictions before purchasing a home. While it can be difficult to commit to reentering the housing market after deciding on a property, overpaying for a home is never a good idea. If the seller of the home refuses to negotiate to fair market value, walk away, and depend on the expertise of your real estate agent to find a more realistic option that won’t be a bad investment for the future.

Peter J. is a writer whose interests include central Texas real estate, studying the stars and couponing.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Choosing a Home Inspector

Choosing a Home Inspector

Among the contingencies written into your offer for your dream home, none are more important than the home inspection clause. With this, you are legally permitted to obtain a complete inspection of the property to check for any unknown problems that could end up busting your budget. From foundation issues to outdated, unsafe electrical systems, issues discovered during a home inspection could save you a ton of time and money when deciding whether to acquire a new piece of property. With this in mind, don’t trust just anyone to give you an all-clear on the condition of a property. Just as you took the time to find the perfect property for your needs, you should put proper effort into ensuring the qualifications and trustworthiness of a home inspector before trusting his or her word on the condition of your potential home. So, where do you start when searching for a great home inspector? Let’s take a look at some methods for ensuring that your inspector is the best available for your needs.

In the best case scenario, you’ll search for an inspector before submitting an offer on a home. By doing so beforehand, you can take your time when meeting inspectors and avoid restrictive time constraints.

With your offer on a home accepted, the clock begins ticking on your period to get a home inspection. With tight deadlines and high pressure come less opportunities to interview and analyze home inspector options. According to Front Door, finding an inspector before locating and offering on your dream property is the best way to remove the pressure to hire the first inspector that comes your way. Taking the time to find the best inspector to fit your needs is definitely a worthy venture, as his or her report on the condition of your home could be your last opportunity to find potential problems before signing a purchase contract on the property.

For a list of experienced inspectors with which to begin your search, depend on the knowledge of your real estate agent, as well as friends and family, to avoid wasting time with unqualified, unprofessional options.

In addition to various online home inspector review databases, home inspectors depend a great deal on word-of-mouth advertising to spread the reviews of their services. If you’ve got family or friends who’ve recently purchased a home in the area, consulting with them about their home inspection experience could be a great way to begin the hunt for the inspector you need. If not, your real estate agent should have working knowledge of a few inspectors in the area with good qualifications and customer feedback. In any case, depending on your home searching team is a great way to weed out inspectors who aren’t good for your particular needs.

When interviewing potential inspectors, ask plenty of questions. The answers you receive should give you a better idea of the qualifications of each home inspector.

According to US News, there are seven important questions that you should ask each and every home inspector. Professional organization affiliation, professional background, years of experience and training, the average length of inspections, the main aspects of inspection, whether or not you can attend the inspection (this shouldn’t be a problem) and the type of report they provide are all major topics of discussion for interviewing professional home inspectors. If you’ve got other questions relating to your specific home search, don’t hesitate to let them know. Sometimes, the way a question is answered is just as revealing as the answer itself.
Protect your own interests by ensuring that your home inspector carries an errors and omissions (E&O) insurance policy. If there’s a problem with your inspection, you’ll probably need this policy to recoup potential losses.

Even the very best of home inspection professionals can make mistakes, so ensuring an insurance policy is in place to protect you in the event of an oversight is an important detail to consider. If a major issue is discovered after moving into your new home, an E&O insurance policy will allow you to get the costs needed to correct the problem without dealing with the possibility of a bankrupted inspector and a lawsuit. Having protection when making an investment as large as a new home is never a bad idea, so taking the extra time to ensure that a policy is in place could pay huge dividends in the future. If you’ve got any other questions or concerns regarding finding the perfect home inspector for your needs, depend on the knowledge and expertise of your real estate agent to guide you through.

Chris G. writes about Leander homes for sale and Texas politics.

Sources:
http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/my-money/2014/04/27/7-questions-to-ask-when-choosing-a-home-inspector