Nailing the Spring Home Purchase

Readers – thank you for continuing to email me at MPattullo@peakmtg.com with your stories and applied advice; I appreciate it!

It’s common to hear from homeowners who after purchasing their first home, realize that if they would have had a strategy, the process might have gone better. It seems people moving into their second home do a little more due diligence. It’s easy to get caught up in shopping for a home. Here is some of shared advice:

• Know the amount you are pre-approved for purchase before shopping! Get it in writing!
• Make a list of items you might want to negotiate (contingencies) like closing dates, maintenance or repairs expected prior to closing or how closing costs are distributed and tell your real estate agent. Understand that just because you can afford the mortgage payment that it doesn’t account for what it costs to maintain the home.
• Don’t open new credit accounts to buy furniture or other items until after you close your loan.
• Visit homes for sale with photos (take them with your phone) of how your current kitchen countertop appears as well as the furniture you currently own as placed where you live now. Do this because it’s easy to fall in love with a staged home and then realize that the home you love looks great because the typical things you have placed on the counter aren’t there. Realize how
  you live and how that fits into the home you are attracted to purchase.
• Take a tape measure with you to check room sizing as well as to possibly check the size of dressers and other large furniture pieces that will go into the home. Sometimes square footage of balconies off a bedroom is added accidently.
• I estimate that just fewer than 50% of home buyers don’t put enough thought into the commute, the schools or the neighborhood. Walk the neighborhood and talk with neighbors. You’ll learn tons including potentially about recently listed homes and the amount those homes sold! This will be helpful in learning about the plusses and minuses about the value of your potential purchase.
• Happy Home Shopping! For more information or to send me a question or to share some
  wisdom, download the PeakApproveMe app, visit PeakMtgNW.com, email me at MPattullo@Peakmtg.com or give me a call at 360.607.9312.

We lend where we live,

Michael Pattullo
Peak Mortgage
Mortgage Advisor • MLO# 229675 • Peakmtgnw.com
360-607-9312