Secure Financing
Steps to Buying a Home-Step 3
Ultimately, your lender will pre-approve you for a certain amount, but YOU will decide what you’re comfortable paying every month. Remember, your lender only sees your finances on paper. It’s up to you to decide how much you’re willing to stretch your budget in order to get into your dream home.
Be sure to follow these six steps to financing your home:
- Choose a loan officer.
- Make a loan application and get preapproved.
- Determine what you want to pay and select a loan option.
- Submit to the lender an accepted purchase offer contract.
- Get an appraisal and title commitment.
- Obtain funding at closing.
Hire Your Agent
Steps to Buying a Home- Step 2
When you’re looking for a real estate professional to help you, know that above all else, good agents put their clients first. This is your dream, and your agent is your advocate to help you make your dream come true.
A great real estate agent will:
- Educate you about the current conditions of market.
- Analyze what you want and what you need in your next home.
- Guide you to homes that fit your criteria.
- Coordinate the work of other needed professionals throughout the process.
- Negotiate with the seller on your behalf.
- Check and double-check paperwork and deadlines.
- Solve any problems that may arise.
Decide to Buy
Steps to Buying a Home- Step 1
The decision to purchase your first home is one of the biggest and best decisions you could ever make. After all, a home is the largest (and most emotional) investment most people will ever make. So, how do you know if it’s the right time for you to buy your first home?
- There is never a wrong time to buy the right home. The key is finding a good buy and taking the time to carefully evaluate your finances.
- A home purchase is an important step in the path to long-term wealth. Purchasing your own home is a great investment that provides specific financial advantages, including equity buildup, value appreciation potential and tax benefits. It’s also an automatic savings plan that you cannot get from renting!
- Here’s the most important rule for keeping your stress to a minimum: you don’t have to know everything. Terrie Fink is ready to help you through every step of the process.
Do You Know a Homeowner Facing Foreclosure?
Here’s A Way Out.
Headlines today are filled with stories about homeowners in financial distress—people who face a lender’s foreclosure on their home.
Millions of American home owners are wondering what to do.
Like most crises, this one has produced its share of rumors and misinformation. One of the biggest ones is “just let it happen.” Why fight back, this line of thinking goes. It’s too emotionally draining, and the government’s loan modifications aren’t helping many people. Well, that’s only partly true.
While government loan modification programs have fallen short of the mark so far, there is another solid, sensible option for homeowners. It’s called a short sale—a sale to a buyer where the seller’s lender agrees to accept less than the full amount owned.
Why not be foreclosed? Why sell short? Agents who have closed hundreds of these transactions provide this list of reasons:
- Avoid the foreclosure stigma – Homeowners will always have to disclose that they had a foreclosure on any mortgage application and (many job applications) that they submit in the future. This can have an adverse affect on their future mortgage rates. Foreclosure is asked about specifically in credit inquiries. There is no seven-year time limit on this item.
- Protect credit score – Credit scores will be lowered by 300-plus points (per loan) by foreclosure. The impact of a short sale—about half that much.
- Improve eligibility for a government insured loan – The homeowner will be ineligible for a government insured loan for 5-7 years (only two years in a short sale). A foreclosure is the one credit report item that is almost impossible to have repaired.
- Avoid a deficiency judgment – Lenders can seek a deficiency judgment against the homeowner and collect any amount they do not recover at sale.
- Protect employment prospects – Many employers run credit checks on prospective employees. Foreclosure is one of the top items that will put a potential new hire, or even current employment, in jeopardy.
These are the top reasons, but there are more. An expert short sale specialist agent can give a full picture of the options.
One more tip. Don’t believe everything you read about how long short sales take and how few get finalized. Short sale timelines, while still longer than normal, are shrinking as lenders get their paperwork act together. Find out who the top short sale agents are in your market. These pros are closing 70 to 90 percent of the short sales they represent—more than three times the national average. They know where to find buyers, and how to negotiate the buyer’s offer effectively with lenders and get the deal closed—so the homeowner can move on with life and recover.
FOR MORE INFORMATION CONTACT TERRIE FINK OR VISIT WWW.THINKTERRIEFINK.COM
Buying a Foreclosure
Foreclosed and foreclosing properties dominate many of today’s U.S. real estate markets—more than four years after the sharpest observers saw the market shift coming, and more than two years after the reality hit home for millions of American home owners.
The recent Keller Williams Distressed Property Buying Survey unearthed great information about where the opportunities are, how big they are, and how smart, capable buyers are leveraging the current market.
First-time home buyers make up almost half of all buyers of bank-owned foreclosures and soon-to-be foreclosed short sale properties. They’re followed closely by investors seeking rental properties, and a third important group—homeowners who find they can move up to a bigger or better home they previously could not afford.
To help more consumers win as buyers, Keller Williams agents are now offering a workshop, “Winning with Foreclosures,” that shows buyers how to prepare to be successful buying the “distressed” properties—homes that offer, according to the survey, a 10 percent to 40 percent price advantage, depending on the local market.
The truth is: these markets demand most of the same things an ordinary market demands of buyers—only more intensely and pointedly:
- Money: Buyers must be financially qualified and ready to buy. The best properties go quickly. Buyers must look strong to lenders.
- Motivation: Buyers must be motivated to compete successfully. Keller Williams agents urge their buyers in this market to be clear about both their “motivating why” and their criteria for the property itself (size, location, condition, floor plan, etc.)
- Location: Contrary to the rumors, prime buying opportunities exist in almost every neighborhood and price range.
- Condition: Buyers should understand that repair costs are not necessarily large. The Keller Williams Distressed Property Buying Survey shows the average cost to repair to be $5,000—that’s less than 3 percent of the median purchase price in the U.S. today.
- Expert Help: Finally, smart buyers know they need to be even smarter—they become a team with a local expert agent who knows local property, pricing, lenders, and the best listing agents. A strong listing agent can be a critical advantage in seeing a distressed property through from contract to close.
So, bottom line—if you think you want to buy, have a talk with yourself first, check your financial readiness, and get with an expert and learn everything you need to know, in order to get what you want in this market.
The Big Picture and You
I learned long ago that being steeped in the business of real estate does not necessarily translate into grasping the big picture. So I made a commitment to digging beneath the surface and understanding the critical interactions that drive the real estate market. As I did so, I realized how hungry my clients were for solid information.
I’ve never lost my fascination for the facts behind the headlines, and today, I believe that Keller Williams Realty’s sharp focus on research is central to what sets us apart as a company.
Nearly every client enters into a conversation about buying or selling a home with a lot of preconceived notions and anecdotal information. It’s our job to be knowledgeable of the actual facts and to step up as the local economist of choice. That’s what our clients are looking to us for, and it’s the basis for the trust they place in us.
But having walked several miles in your shoes, we recognize that in-depth research probably doesn’t fall in your “20 percent.” In fact, most agents aren’t trained to conduct the kind of analysis that the KW Research team is known for. So this year, we’ve compiled the results of our most recent research studies into the KW Market Navigator: Vision and Opportunities.
It’s filled with facts, stats and perspectives (see the example below or click here for a sneak peek) that you can draw from on a daily basis. And believe it or not, it’s fun to read.
Of course any observations on my part concerning the importance of research and market statistics would not be complete without my overriding perspective on the topic: The market determines the number of people who will be successful, not which ones. You get to decide if you’ll be one.
Terrie Fink And Associates 
