Blog

There’s no avoiding the stress and anxiety that comes along with buying a new home. It can become more manageable over time, but there’s always opportunities for unprecedented circumstances to pop up – like a revealing inspection or a sudden change in financial status or a global pandemic. It’s hard to keep things picture perfect from when your offer is accepted to when you sign at closing, as much as you might want to. 

To add another layer for new homebuyers, online-based real estate apps can push specific agents and lenders to make the process appear too easy and seamless.  Don’t get us wrong, Zillow, Redfin and other apps are powerful tools in your arsenal, but booking a showing through an app or relying solely on the app’s metrics for comps will give you an unrealistic view of the process. A relator’s institutional knowledge about the housing market and the area where you live is invaluable when you’re walking a house and they have better tools at their disposal to share comps and help you make a strong offer. The same goes for an online lending app. They might give you a good idea of your price point, but the ones with looser terms and lackluster backgrounds might be the reason why your offer isn’t picked over another. 

Relying on apps might be the cheaper option, but you’re buying a house. If you thought it would be cheap to do it right, you’re probably making the wrong investment decision. 

For all of these reasons, and many more, it’s incredibly important to find a realtor and a lender who can support you through your home buying experience and make it smooth as possible. They will be the ones fielding your phone calls when you want to make a showing appointment at 8 a.m. and an offer at 1 p.m. on a Saturday – and then negotiate through late Sunday night. You have to develop a sense of trust and constant lines of communication. 

The best way to begin your search for a realtor and lender is through your own network. Have any family, friends or colleagues in your area recently purchased a home? Ask them about their experience with their realtor and lender and see if they have any recommendations for a specific agent or company. A mutual connection is a great way to build a relationship – and how a lot of these agents like to do business! 

It’s completely appropriate to interview your realtor and lender prior to choosing to work with them, whether they’ve come recommended by a friend or not. Here’s a few traits you’ll want to look for:

1. Strong Local Experience

Every city, town, and even neighborhood has its own nuances and your realtor should have experience with the areas where you’re searching to help you find the best option for the best price. Your dream neighborhood might have an expensive and restrictive homeowners association or have planned construction in the coming months that will make a quiet space much louder and busier. Your realtor needs experience to know what will best suit your wants and needs as a buyer. If they’re locally based, they’ll also likely have strong insight into competing offers and might even know the listing agent or one of their colleagues, which can help you get a leg up in the process or maybe alert you that you shouldn’t make an offer on a home if they don’t have a good reputation. Similarly, having a lender with a strong local reputation can make your offer more attractive to a seller and their listing agent because they’ll likely be familiar with their company. 

2. Diligent + Timely Communication

Communication is key to having a good relationship with your realtor and lender. You will likely be exchanging more texts, calls, and emails with these two throughout the process than with your friends and family. In an aggressive market, there will be days where you need your realtor to show up at 8 a.m. on a Saturday to see a house that only popped up the day before. You’ll want to put in an offer a few hours later and your lender will need to be on standby to crunch the numbers with an updated cost breakdown so you know what to include in your offer package. Communication also shows commitment – to you, your home buying process and to their own pay day. 

3. Willing to Educate 

As we both bought our first houses, the education component that our realtor and lender brought to the table was invaluable. There’s too many terms, tactics and potential outcomes throughout the process to go it on your own, so finding someone that can patiently educate you throughout the process is important. Not only will it help you become a more educated homebuyer, but it again shows their commitment to the process and your potential referrals for your network. 

Our realtor is a family friend, which can be really common in an area with a housing market like others, but we know that we’d pick him even if he wasn’t. He has years of experience and sales growth under his belt and an office in the same zip code as our current house, making him the perfect candidate for future home buys in the area. He referred us to our lender, who Andy used for his first home and we used again for our second, and the relationship will only grow from there! 

If it seems like we’re a little crazy about the quality of realtors and lenders, it’s because we are…kind of. The two are going to be your partners in this process and you always want to assemble the best team for the best outcome. That doesn’t mean you can’t find that person on Zillow or consistent “for sale” signs around the neighborhood (connections need to be made somehow!), but make sure you do your research first and find people who are as committed to helping you find a home as you are. If they have the three traits we mentioned above, you’ve found the right people for your home buying experience. 

For our friends in Northern Virginia, we highly recommend Rob Cox Real Estate and Intercoastal Mortgage.

When we made the decision to purchase a fixer-upper in the 2020 spring market, we did not anticipate that our life change would be accompanied by a global pandemic. Upon reflection, it’s hard to explain how everything happened and we’re incredibly grateful that everything worked out in our favor. 

Our home buying process started like any other – we narrowed our search to a few areas with our realtor and we began touring homes that fit our must-have list and budget. We found a home that we loved fairly quickly in late February and put in an offer, but the seller ultimately decided not to sell the home after further consideration. Little did we know that our timeline was going to become urgent in a matter of weeks. 

We toured our current home about a week later. At that point, the pandemic was something that our realtor was talking about as a potential hurdle for his business, but he wasn’t concerned about our ability to make a purchase and close. Although, it was pretty clear at this point that it was going to become serious soon. We made an offer that was accepted the following day and we were set to close on April 1. 

In the midst of this, Andy was also selling his first home. His first home was beautifully renovated (more on that to come in later posts!) and we weren’t concerned about it selling quickly, but it was truly a balancing act. The sale wasn’t contingent in technical terms, but we needed the money from the sale to close on our purchase together and, now we had threats of lockdowns and stay at home orders coming soon. 

Andy listed the house a little over a week later and Alexa began working from home that same week. The tours were set to begin the following week, scheduled from Thursday-Saturday and culminating in an open house on Sunday. Andy ultimately decided to cancel the open house for health concerns and we chose to sleep at one of our nearby parent’s houses for the days of the tours to minimize opportunity for us to interact with potential germs. It was a move that might be risky to homeowners in a certain market, but Andy had received multiple offers on his home at that point and we felt comfortable that we would settle on a strong offer without the open house. 

13 offers later, Andy settled on his top two and the home was under contract the following day. We then began the mad scramble to pack up our home and prepare for our transition. This part of the process was pretty traditional, as was our closing with our title company. We wore masks, used hand sanitizer and left the office as quickly as possible – which our facilitator told us was something that he could get used to. Andy’s sale had a potential emergency situation when the female buyer went into labor on her closing day, which was the very last thing we were expecting in the moment that we were living in, but still signed the paperwork to make sure everything was executed on time. You go girl. 

We settled into our new home (or began ripping things apart!) as things in the outside world continued to escalate and even then, we were shocked that we had somehow pulled it off. The experience was a great lesson in learning how to pivot, maintaining a positive attitude and being flexible when life doesn’t want you to be. They’re lessons that everyone has learned over the past year, but they’re helpful in any home buying experience, pandemic or not. You have to be willing to make quick decisions, accept when things don’t go your way and find ways to work around it. With a little faith, you’ll realize that you end up in the right place. 

Also, about 25 days after we closed on the house, we also adopted a rescue puppy named Penny. While we don’t necessarily recommend bringing a new dog into a renovation environment, big changes have a habit of all happening at once and we wouldn’t have had it any other way. 

Did you buy a home in the pandemic? What was your experience like? If not, share the craziest part of your home buying stories!

We’ve all been a victim of shopping around for our dream home on Zillow – us included! We draw the lines around our preferred location hoping that something in our price range pops up, or look at the multi-million dollar mansions in another zip code to see how other people live. It’s fun and shows you a bunch of possibilities for the future. A quick sidenote: If you don’t follow @zillowgonewild on Instagram, we highly recommend it, especially if you love seeing the inside of crazy houses like us. 

When it comes time to search for your first or next home though, checking Zillow turns into a full-on treasure hunt and the choices that you enjoyed having when you were idly browsing can become a little daunting. That’s when it’s time to close the app and make a list – one of many you’ll make throughout this process. 

There’s three things that you have to think about when you’re planning on buying your first home: price, location, and must-have features. These are the top three factors that will impact every home purchase you make and determine which properties you consider for purchase. 

It might seem like these are in order of importance – and ultimately price will be the most important factor in your purchase – but it really depends on the buyer. One buyer might be fixated on a certain price range with a reasonable commuting distance to work, while another wants a two-car garage in their dream neighborhood. A location could be a must-have while a must-have could determine location. All of these factors are dependent on one another in the decision making process, so you have to begin by deciding what is most important to you in your next home. 

Here’s a few things to consider in each category as you begin your search: 

1. Price. Before you consider buying a home, you have to know how much you’re willing to put down on the home and, if applicable, an estimated monthly mortgage payment. Start by determining how much money to have to spend on the home upfront – whether it’s an all cash offer or down payment. If it’s a down payment, you’ll also want to think about what percentage you’ll want to put down. 20% is considered the gold standard, but some states will let you go as low as 3% if you’re a first-time home buyer. From there,  you can approximate a price range that will guide your initial search. Hot tip: You’re going to be able to afford a home that’s more expensive than you thought – stick with your budget and your gut, or you’ll probably end up house poor.  Doing the prep work ahead of time will help you feel confident in what you can afford and where you’re financially comfortable. It is never too early to start talking to a lender to help you form your price range and has the added benefit of getting you pre-approved just in case the perfect home pops up unexpectedly. 

2. Location. Deciding on a location is such a personal choice. Whether you’re a city, suburb or rural dweller, your location will be the biggest determinant of if you get the price and any of the must-haves you want. You’ll know where you want to live most based on proximity to work, school zones, leisure activities, or other important lifestyle factors. One tip that could help your search is having a few zipcodess or neighborhoods where you’re willing to look, otherwise you could get stuck searching for a needle in a haystack or willing to pay more than you should if you are just waiting around hoping for one of a handful of homes to hit the market.

3. Must-haves. What are the main features that you need to have in your next home? A backyard for your pets and kids? Multiple guest rooms for out-of-town family? A space for a luxurious bathroom to unwind? Whatever they are, create a list that can help you narrow in on properties to see. It’s important to be reasonable – we’ve all seen that episode of an HGTV where someone wants a laundry list of home features that is not reasonable for their price range. Start by making your list long and then pare it back or number it in order of importance. This will help you visualize your ideal home and help you determine what non-starters are when you’re previewing new listings.

We’ve hinted at this already, but after you narrow in on the main elements of each of these factors, you then need to decide your level of compromise on each one. Are you willing to increase your budget because you found a home in an ideal location or it has one additional feature on your must-have list? Are you willing to get your hands dirty and put in some work to an old kitchen or decaying backyard if that means spending a little less? If you’re willing to do extra work, prioritize having the space to do it as opposed to it being done for you already. 

When we were searching for our current home, Alexa was interested in a city that was never on Andy’s radar, so much so that we weren’t even considering the city and surrounding neighborhoods. But when we weren’t finding anything we liked in other locations after a few weeks, our realtor urged us to look in this spot. Three properties and some aimless driving around later, Andy was hooked. It’s where we live now and want to purchase our next home too, where only 12 months prior our Zillow search circle wasn’t anywhere near. 

You have to know where you’re willing to compromise and your own limits as you search to find the best property for you – and a big part of that is also seeing homes that meet certain aspects of your criteria. You might fall in love with a home that isn’t an open concept or in a neighborhood you hadn’t considered. Come to every showing prepared with your list, but also know where you’re willing to make compromises too. 

With your prepared price, location and must-have list, you’ll be able to set up a meeting with a real estate agent and lender confident in what you’re looking for and what you can afford to spend. A good real estate agent will help you walk through this, but going into your first meeting with them already having most of this worked out will significantly streamline the buying process and help remove some of the uncertainty and stress of early home shopping.

What’s on the top of your must-have list? Comment below and let us know!