subject: Getting Prepared To Buy Your First Home [print this page] What you should decide about first in buying your first home is: whether or not to purchase it! There are advantages to owning your own home, such as building equity in the home, and the many tax benefits such as the mortgage interest deduction and real estate tax deduction. In addition, you may not have a choice; if your family is growing bigger, there are not many apartments that have three or four bedrooms.
But the advantages of first time home ownership must be countered against the disadvantages. When you live in a rental unit and something goes wrong, you merely have to notify the landlord or his agent. In your own house, you become the landlord. There is no way around it, owning a home is a lot more difficult than renting.
But if you are still not put off, let's look at the first steps you should take. The most important thing is to know how much house you can afford. There are many first time home buyer programs that may make it easier for you to qualify.
Checking into loan programs will also allow you to learn how much down payment you will need and how much in monthly payments you can manage, based on your income.
Next on the list is where you would like your new home to be located.
You can do the best part of the beginning search for your dream first home on the internet. Most real estate companies have sites that make it easy to look at hundreds of homes in a given area, while you are just seated at your desk!
The school system can be important to you, and you can ask in the area, or you can check the many surveys done, such as Newsweek's, on the ranking of various school systems.
Today, there is even a service that will rank the schools, and then links you to homes for sale.
After you have picked the area, searching on line is easy: you just go onto a real estate site and pick the various search features, such as number of bedrooms and baths, style of home, and of course, price range.
This step in the search will give you a good idea of the type and number of homes available in the size, style and price range you prefer. But there is one visit you should make before you go visit the real estate agent, and that is a mortgage broker to begin your mortgage application process.
Shopping for a home with a mortgage commitment already granted is one of the wisest things a prospective first time home buyer can do. First of all, it will mark you as a serious prospect, and not just a "tire kicker". Additionally, you have an advantage over most other potential buyers because you can move the sale along more quickly since you securely have the financing in place.
