After years of selling real estate in the Denver market, I’ve been wanting to write this for a long time…
5 Things You Must Know If You Want To Buy A Home
1. What Happened To That Ferrari?
Let’s say you are in need of a new car and you really love the idea of a Ferrari. You start researching online Ferraris for sale, you start comparing makes, models and years, and you begin narrowing down your favorite ones to a list. You now take a day-off, take your partner, friend or spouse, and decide to go to the dealership and test some of the cars out.
That red hot one sure is perfect for you. After contemplating it for a while, you tell the sales guy you are ready to buy the car yet you are planning to finance it. The car sales man kindly lets you know that after some research, unfortunately, they can’t lend you the money for it. It turns out you can actually only afford a much less expensive car. Sorry friend.
What do you think happens to your level of excitement now that you need to choose something less expensive? You might like something, but in your mind you’ve already envisioned yourself cruising down Speer Blvd in that Ferrari. The whole car buying process now seems like a real disappointment.
This is what might happen to you if you are planning on buying a home with a loan and don’t get pre-approved with a lender. That beautiful and perfect home that you could afford, would have been so much more appreciated if you didn’t spend so much time looking at the mansion with the personal security guard for the past 3 months.
2. Those Adele Tickets Go Fast You Know
Photograph courtesy of ©Wikimedia Commons
Your friend Debbie contacts you this morning and tells you: “Guess what?! Adele tickets are on sale!”, your response to her: “Sounds great Debbie! I’m just busy right now, but in about five days from now at 5pm, I will have some time to buy them”.
Five days go by and right before 5pm, you contact Debbie and ask her for the link to buy those tickets. Hmmm… good luck with getting those tickets now!
The Denver real estate market is experiencing a period of low inventory, meaning there are more people looking to purchase properties right now than those offering theirs for sale. Just like there are more people wanting to attend an Adele concert than available seats at the Pepsi Center. If you find a home you like – go see it. It might be gone tomorrow.
3. The Pet You Adopt Will Be Your Family
You go to the shelter and really want to adopt “Lassie”. She’s an adorable dog and you fall in love the moment you both laid eyes on each other. You file an application, only to learn that 10 other people today also would like to adopt “Lassie”. You nervously wait to learn if you are the lucky one to bring her home. Too bad – it’s not you.
“But Lassie was going to fit perfectly in my life. I can’t imagine having any other dog now in the world!”. A few weeks go by and you still really want to adopt a dog. You go back to the shelter and meet “Lass”. You love him and put an application to adopt him. This time you are the one chosen! “Lass” is going home with you and he’s going to be part of your family and you won’t be able to envision from now on a life with the other dog “Lassie”. Who’s “Lassie” anyway?!
When buying a home people tend to envision their lives in the house they are submitting an offer to buy. If they lose the offer to someone else, then they feel upset and distraught.
Don’t worry – the one you will end up getting will end up being your home that you love, and you will completely forget about the rest “almost”-houses-you nearly-bought.
4. Fancy Boots With Broken Heels
I own a pair of really fancy boots. I bought them once on a whim because they were gorgeous. Those shoes cost me $200 and I couldn’t have been happier to wear them. Within about two weeks, the heels broke off, I had no receipt and I was pissed. Bye shoes and bye $200.
Now imagine there was a service at check-out that offered to check the quality of the shoes for me by testing, scanning, scoping and researching the shoes I was about to purchase, for a fraction of the price of what I was about to pay before I bought them. For $200 shoes – that’s worth the cost. Luckily, even without this service, I can still go and buy a different pair and my savings aren’t ruined. Yet this isn’t the case when buying a big investment such as a home.
If you are buying a house order necessary tests such as a home inspection, radon test , sewer scope (and at times a structural engineer). The money you might lose down the line by not having those inspections done – far outweighs the cost of the tests.
5. Waiting In Line For Nothing Sucks
You are waiting in one of those insanely long and crazy lines to buy locally-made and delicious ice-cream. You’ve already chosen your flavors, you can taste the ice-cream literally on the tip of your tongue. Finally after hours of waiting, you reach the counter. The ice-cream shop lady scoops your choices, puts them nicely on a cone, sprinkles some rainbow sprinkles, and informs you it will cost $6.50 please.
Wait what? The sign said $5, and that’s all you have! Well that didn’t include things like tax, some special delivery charge to bring the milk from Italy and so on. In this scenario you might nicely request the lady to let this one slide and sell it to you for $5. You were after all, waiting in line for two hours. Maybe she will let you have it. Heck maybe the guy behind you will feel sorry for you and will offer to pay the rest.
In real estate that does not happen. When you calculate how much you need to buy a house, don’t just calculate the downpayment amount. Homebuyers need to also take in consideration costs such as lender closing costs, real estate closing costs, inspection costs and so on. Find out how much those add up to first, so you don’t reach the counter and leave without your ice cream.
Psst… Looking to buy a home? I’m a local Denver & Denver Metro Realtor with Kentwood Real Estate Cherry Creek. Visit my website to search for homes for sale!