The home inspection is an essential part of your homebuying journey. Your inspector can identify potential problems in the house, such as foundation damage and a leaky roof, before you head to closing—giving you time to negotiate repairs. However, the inspector only conducts a basic visual inspection of some home components and will not check other areas. While the requirements for a home inspection can vary from state to state, the list below includes the parts of the home that require additional professional inspection. Always make sure you know exactly what is and isn’t part of your home inspection.
Everything You Need to Know About Appraisal Gaps
With mortgage interest rates remaining low compared to historic averages, many people are financing their home purchases – a move that makes a lot of financial sense.
Whenever you buy a property and intend to take out a mortgage on it, whether it be a house, condo or cooperative, all mortgage lenders will require an appraisal, which is an unbiased estimate of the true or fair market value of the property. All lenders order an appraisal during the mortgage loan process so that there is an objective way to assess the home's market value, and ensure the amount of money requested by the borrower is appropriate.
What’s the Difference Between Prequalified and Preapproved?
The homebuying process comes with a language all its own, and two of the terms you may have heard are prequalified and preapproved. While both can be essential parts of obtaining a mortgage and buying a home, you may not know what they mean. Check out the information below to learn how each term may benefit you during your home search.
Your 2022 Homebuying Game Plan
Over the past year, the real estate market has been marked by unpredictability and, at times, overheated competition. This has resulted in some buyers bowing out after one too many disappointments while other potential buyers put off their home-buying plans, hoping that things would settle down.
Whichever type of buyer you are, you may be thinking ahead to the new year and planning to begin a search for a new home. If so, it’s vital to prepare yourself for the challenges—and opportunities—that lie ahead.
Will Housing Inventory Increase in 2022?
If you’ve been following the real estate market, you probably know that it has been many months since buyers and sellers enjoyed anything like business as usual, with record-low interest rates and inventory in markets both large and small. But now we may be able to envision a return to a real estate market that’s a little more like normal.
Tips for Buyers
When you're first starting to look to buy, you'll quickly pick up on a few trends happening in the local market. For example, you might notice an over abundance of properties available for sale (indicating a buyer's market), or on the flip side, you might not find very much available (indicating a seller's market).
Either way the market may be heading, there are always a couple of extra tips you'll want to note when looking at homes.
Finding a Home in a Low Inventory Market
One of the most common refrains that has come out of the very hot 2020 real estate market is the message that this is a perfect time to sell a home. Record low interest rates combined with a low inventory market and a shortened spring market means that demand is high and, in many areas, homes are selling for prices well above asking with multiple offers.
Top 7 Things You Need to Know Before House-hunting on Zillow
Just as Kleenex has become the name for any brand of facial tissue and “to Xerox” is used as a verb for making copies, Zillow is the first name in online home search with 196 million unique visitors last year. That’s about double the number that Realtor.com enjoyed during the same period, making Zillow the platform that, in many ways, drives the real estate industry.
How to Know When It’s Time to Move
If you’re on the fence of whether to move or not, it’s crucial that the entire family sits down and makes a list of pros and cons. But sometimes, even that’s not enough, and you can be left wondering whether or not it’s the right time to get the moving boxes ready. These are some reasons to keep in mind as you prepare to make this life-changing decision.
5 Vital Tips for First-Time Home Buyers
Buying your first home is equivalent to embarking on a grand adventure. Although extremely thrilling, learning the ins and outs of the process can often seem overwhelming. From determining a budget to obtaining a loan, there are numerous factors to take into consideration along the way. Keep these five tips in mind throughout the journey.