First Time Home Buying Buying your first home can be a nerve racking experience. We specialize in working with first-time home buyers. No matter what your price range we will work diligently to find the best home to suit your needs. Prices in the Denver market are high and it is important to work with someone who will help you get the most for your money. It is also important to work with someone who will help to advise you through the intricacies of obtaining a mortgage, finding the right property, negotiating the inspection, and closing. We offer extensive information on mortgages, agency, inspections and the entire home buying process. Our referrals speak for themselves. To better familiarize first-time home buyers with the home buying process below is a step by step list of what the process is like to purchase a home and answers to some of the more frequently asked questions. 1. First thing that you want to do is to get pre-qualified with a lender to see how much you can afford to buy. It is free to get pre-qualified. There are a list of lenders who Perfect Properties has had good experiences with in the Lender section. If you are serious about buying your first step before you begin looking is to call a lender and find out how much you qualify for. There is no point in looking until you know how much you qualify to buy - it can be depressing to look above your price range. 2. Contact a Realtor (hopefully Perfect Properties) When you have gotten pre-qualified it is time to meet with a Realtor. On a first meeting we sit down and discuss agency. (you can review your agency options in the buyer disclosures section) We also discuss what you are looking for in a home. Are you looking for a single family home or a condo? What areas of Denver are you interested in? Based on your budget we can discuss what areas provide you the most for your money. The neighborhoods sections can begin to give you an overview of many of Denver's great neighborhoods. 3. We go out and start looking. This is the most fun portion of purchasing a property. It can take some time to find the right property. We are never in a hurry to push our clients into a property. We have a passion for looking at properties and will keep looking with you until we find the perfect property for you. The first couple times that we look at properties gives us a better understanding of what you like and don't like in a property. 4. The hunt. Once we have a good idea of what we are looking for for you, we check the MLS system several times a day for new listings for you. When something comes up that we think that you might like, we send it to you immediately. If you are interested in seeing the property, we can set a showing up for you, often that same day. Good properties, especially those in the first-time home buyer range, go quickly in every market, even sluggish ones. 5. Making an offer. Okay, so you have found a property that is right for you and you want to make an offer. We sit down and go through the entire Colorado contract to buy and sell Real Estate and we explain each section as we go through it to help you better understand the contract. You decide what price you want to offer on the property. We can give you guidance based on our experience, but ultimately, we fill out the contract exactly according to your specifications. This can be a nerve racking time, exciting and uncertain, but we are there to answer all of your questions to the best of our ability. Typically there is earnest money provided with a contract - money held by the listing agent or third party like a title company. Typically this money will be credited back to the buyer at closing as long as they do not default on the contract. 6. Once you have made an offer, you wait for the sellers response. Response times can vary. In the contract, you specify a date and time by which the seller must respond or the contract becomes null and void. Now, this does not always ensure a timely response from the seller. In particular, if a property is a "Short Sale" or a "Foreclosure" it can take weeks or even months to get a response from a bank. In order to get that great deal it can take a lot of patience. 7. There may be a counter proposal made and a property is not under contract until it is fully executed, that is that it is signed by all parties. Once a written agreement has been made and initialed and signed by all parties, you are under contract. 8. Now that you are under contract the real work begins. If you are obtaining a loan to finance the property, your lender will need a copy of the fully executed contract as soon as possible so that they can begin processing your loan. It is very important that you provide your lender with anything that they need to process the contract to avoid potentially costly delays. 9. Inspections! It is very important that you hire qualified professionals to inspect your property. The investment that you make on inspections will be returned to you many-fold by avoiding possibly astronmically high home costs. In the "Professionals Directory" section are lists of qualified professionals that you can hire to help you inspect your property. 10. Inspection negotiations. Once you have had the various inspections performed that you choose to have done, you have several options. You can terminate the contract. As long as this is done in writing before the Inspection Objection deadline agreed to in the Colorado Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate, you will have your earnest money refunded to you. Your next option is an Inspection Objection. The buyer may provide the buyer with a list of items, that if the seller repairs as detailed in the list, the buyer will purchase the property. These negotiations can be tricky and it is important that a buyer have an experienced advice in assisting the buyer with the negotiation so that they feel comfortable with the property that they are purchasing and avoid potentially expensive surprises. There may be some back and forth negotiations. As long as the parties come to a written agreement prior to the "Inspection Resolution" deadline, the conntract will move forward as written. If after the inspection, the buyer is satisfied with the condition of the property. They may let the Inspection Objection pass without making a written objection and the contract will go forward as written. 11. Appraisal. If you are obtaining a loan to purchase your property your lender will probably require an appraisal be done to ensure that an independent third party validates the value of the property. Typically, we will contact your lender and ask that they not order the appraisal until the inspection has been resolved. Most often the lender will require the buyer to pay for the appraisal once it has been ordered. Until the inspection is resolved, we want to save the buyer that expense in case the buyer chooses not to go forward with the contract based on the inspection. Also, it can tip your negotiating hand when the seller sees that you are investing more money in the property before the negtiation is completed. Typically, the appraiser will contact the listing agent and the burden of proving the value of the property rests on the seller and the listing agent. If the property appraises under the value agreed to in the Colorado Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate the buyer has several choices under the appraisal provision. They can choose to terminate the contract in writing provided to the seller by the Appraisal Deadline, they can come up with extra money down to make up the difference between the appraised value and the amount required down by their lender and go forward with the purchase of the property. They can notify the seller that they will purchase the property if the buyer reduces the purchase price to the appraised value. 12. Hazard Insurance. After the Inspection is resolved, the buyer needs to contact Hazard insurance agents and arrange for hazard insurance be provided for the property at closing. If the buyer is unable to obtain acceptable hazard insurance based on the condition of the property or any other factor, they may terminate the contract. The buyer's earnest money will be returned as long as the termination accurs prior to the Insurance Objection deadline agreed to in the Colorado Contract to Buy and Sell Real Estate. 13. Title Insurance 5 Things to Understand About Title Insurance 1. It protects your ownership right to your home both from fraudulent claims against your ownership and from mistakes made in earlier sales, such as mistake in the spelling of a person’s name or an inaccurate description of the property. 2. It’s a one-time cost usually based on the price of the property. 3. It’s usually paid for by the sellers. 4. There are both lender title policies, which protect the lender, and owner title policies, which protect you. The lender will probably require a lender policy. 5. Discounts on premiums are sometimes available if the home has been bought within only a few years since not as much work is required to check the title. Ask the title company if this discount is available.
The Title Insurance Objection Deadline is the deadline by which, once you have received and reviewed your title work. (We are happy to look through it as well, however, it is beyond the scope of our expertise and if you have a lot of questions you may consider hiring an attorney to review the title work.) If there are not tile issues that you want to object to, the contract goes forward as written. If you dod provide an objection before the objection deadline the seller has 10 days to clear anything clouding title. If they are unable to clear the buyers written objections then the contract becomes null and void and the buyer's earnest money will be returned. |
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