• The Team and the Players
  Home buying is a team sport. After you assemble a winning team, your players should give you solid advice so you can make great decisions.

• The Perfect Agent
  A good agent can be the foundation of your real estate team. A good agent's negotiating skills and knowledge of property values can save you thousands of dollars.

• Understanding Agency
  Real estate agents can represents sellers or buyers, and agency is the legal definition of that relationship.

• Your Agent and You
  After working so hard to find a great agent, it would be a shame to inadvertently ruin the relationship. Good buyer/agent relationships are based upon pillars of mutual loyalty and trust that develop over time.

• Other Key Advisors
  This section covers the other important possible members of your team: house inspectors, the closing officer, financial advisors and tax advisors.

Advantages of Buying

• Owning v. Renting
  Our goals are simple -- to ensure that you're happy with the home you buy and that you get the best deal you can. This describes why owning should be less expensive than renting.

• Wealth and Equity
  Over the many years that you are likely to own it, your home should become an important part of your financial net worth. This section covers tapping into your home equity and how to better understand the value of  your investment.

Preparing to Shop

• Getting Preapproved
  Getting preapproved is a sign of your seriousness to house sellers - it places sort of a Good Borrowing Seal of Approval on you. In a multiple-offer situation, buyers who have been preapproved for a loan have an advantage over buyers who don't. 

• Good Neighborhoods
  Good neighborhoods, like beauty, are in the eyes of the beholder. For example, being near excellent schools is important if you have young children. Personal preferences aside, all good neighborhoods have the following characteristics. 

• Evaluating Neighborhoods
  You're likely to end up evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of several neighborhoods while trying to decide. If you're on a budget you may have to compromise and make tradeoffs. 

• Used Homes
  Used homes have many great features as well as disadvantages. This section covers the strengths and weaknesses of used homes to consider as you're weighing your options.

• New Homes
  New homes have many great features as well as disadvantages. This section covers the strengths and weaknesses of used homes to consider as you're weighing your options.

• Condo/Co-op Advantages
  Condos have a number of significant advantages, especially for first-time  homebuyers. For example, on the basis of livable square footage, condos generally sell for at least 20 to 30 percent less than comparable detached homes. 

Making an Offer

• Basic Rules of Negotiating
  If you follow these basic negotiating guidelines, your deal will practically take care of itself. This explains why to conduct all negotiations face-to-face, why you must everything in writing, and why to make sure that deadlines are met. 

• Making an Offer to Purchase
  After you find your dream home, you're ready to make an offer to purchase. All good offers have a few traits in common, most importantly a realistic price and realistic financing terms.

• Getting a Counter Offer
  It's highly unlikely that the sellers will accept your offer as it's originally written. Sellers use counter offers to fine-tune the price, terms, and conditions of offers they receive. 

• Negotiating Credits
  Especially in a buyer's market, sellers often find that they have to give concessions in order to close the deal. The two most common concessions are for nonrecurring closing costs and corrective work.

• Major Corrective Work
  Give the sellers copies of the reports for them to review before you meet with them to negotiate a corrective work credit. Though sellers may refuse to pay for repairs found by your inspector, you can solve repair issues in a variety of ways. more 

Inspections and Insurance

• Understanding Inspection
  A home's physical condition greatly affects its value. You'd feel horrible if you paid top dollar for a home that you thought was in great shape and then discovered after you bought it that the house was riddled with expensive defects.

• Why Properties Should be Inspected
  It does not matter whether you're buying a new house, used house, condo, townhouse or co-op, All properties should be inspected, period. Here are the reasons why each type deserves an inspection prior to purchase. 

• Types of Inspections
  Which type of inspections you need depends on what area of the country you live in, how the building in question is constructed, and what you plan to do to the property after buying it.

• Optimizing Inspections
  Prepurchase property inspections are intended to give you a factual basis for negotiating the correction of big-ticket defects. Here are guidelines for getting the biggest bang out of the bucks that you invest in a prepurchase property inspection.

• Homeowner's Insurance
  When you buy a home, most lenders require that you purchase homeowner's insurance. This covers the types of insurance protection, why they are important to consider and what to look for in a policy.

• Title Insurance
  Title insurance assures homeowners and mortgage lenders that a property has a valid title. This section covers both major kinds of owners title insurance as well as who pays for it.
  
• Title Risks All the irregularities that exist in a property's past ownership can affect a property's title. Learn about some the causes of these hidden risks to titles. 

Closing the Deal

• Final Closing Statement
  From an accounting standpoint, the most important piece of paper is the final closing statement that you get on the day that your property actually closes.

• Possession Options
  When you actually take possession of your home and move into it depends on the terms of your contract. There are a number of options, and this section covers the potential risks associated with each one.

• Final Verification of Condition
  We urge you to inspect the property the day of, or a few days before, closing, ideally the day of closing. You should be sure that the property is still in the same general condition that it was in when you signed the contract to buy it. 

• Joint Tenancy
  One of your most important decisions is how you take title in the property. If you're single, your choices are simpler. When two or more people co-own a property, however, the number of ways to take title multiplies dramatically. 

• Buyer's Remorse
  Buyer's remorse is the sinking feeling that you paid way, way too much for your new home. Buyer's remorse is compounded by many other anxieties. This section covers them and some methods for getting over your concerns.

After You Buy

• Reassemble Your Finances
  Feeling a squeeze in the budget when you buy a home is perfectly normal. After all, your housing expenses are probably higher than before. In addition to taking a lean-and-mean approach to the rest of your spending, here are some other suggestions. more 

• Ignore Solicitations
  Soon after you move into your home the mailbox will be flooded with solicitations offering you mortgage life insurance, mortgage disability  insurance as well as solicitations for accelerating your mortgage payoff.

• Tax Assessments
  If home prices have dropped since you bought your home, you may be able to appeal your assessment and enjoy a reduction in the property taxes that you're required to pay.

• Refinancing
  Keep half an eye on interest rates. If interest rates decrease from where they were when you took out your mortgage, you may be able to refinance your mortgage and save yourself some money.

• Keep Receipts for Improvements
  Sooner or later, you will spend money on your home. Some of what you spend money on should be tracked and documented for tax purposes in order to minimize the capital gain that you may owe tax on in the future.

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