Tips To Helping Your Buyers Purchase Their Home Sweet Home

To home buyers, purchasing a home is one of the American dreams they hope to accomplish during their life time and in many cases, they hope to make that real estate purchase with a family to share it with. Whether you are an agent representing one of those family home buyers or a single home buyer, there are a few things that we can be certain on. As a Realtor or Real estate agent, desire, need and ability is an important step to determine the qualifications of your home buyers. Understanding their expectations and motivation are extremely important to eliminating any misconceptions, frustrations and simply, wasted time.

Not only are you being considerate of your time but you are also being thoughtful about your buyers time. A proper pre-qualification to determine whether you have a willing and able buyer can go a long way to providing both you – the Realtor – and your buyers with a smooth and peaceful real estate transaction.

A few questions you will want to ask yourself among many others are:

• What type of property does your buyer want?
• What is your buyer’s wish list?
• And what items do the really need from that wish list?
• What is your buyers price range?
• Is this a single, family or investment purchase?
• Do they have a down payment and how much?
• Is financing already available or do they need a pre-approval?

It is your job to lead your clients to their end goal, in many cases, your buyers are not going to know how to get started or how much they can afford or what they should expect when going through the process of buying and financing a home.

Set yourself up for success with a little bit of preparation. Educate the Buyers on the process, explain current market conditions, property values and transaction timelines. Provide a process sheet if you can so they can know what to expect along the way. Many real estate purchases fail to complete because home buyers get the butterflies before the closing date and back out. Make them aware of what to expect so each step of the way, is an expected step.

Help your buyers understand that it is important to find the right property for their needs with the highest likelihood of approval and closing.

Buying a home can be an exciting or a heart pounding process. It’s also one of the most important financial decisions many home buyers will ever make.

Don’t rush into choosing a mortgage to pay for your new home, take your time, this is just as important as finding the home. Before you start shopping for a residential property and a mortgage, set yourself up for success by taking time to prepare. Use this simple step-by-step guide to check your credit, assess your finances, set your home-price budget, and more.

• Check your Credit
• Decide how much you want to spend on a home
• Determine your down payment
• Consider whether it’s the right time for you to buy
• Assess your spending
• Budget for new or changed expenses

Don’t wait until you find a home to start thinking about how to finance it. Take time now to explore your mortgage options so that you’re ready when the right home comes along. Providing a pre-approval letter help your buyers show other sellers that they are a serious willing and able buyer. Compare multiple offers from different lenders and look for the best deal. (Cash offers require proof of funds).

Preparing a complete buyer’s offer can be the difference between your buyer getting their purchase offer accepted, rejected by the seller or simply thrown out without an answer. Make sure that all possible scenarios have been taken into account. Is there multiple offers in place? Is the seller offering to cover closing and if they are, should you take it? That all depends on the number of offers submitted to the same property.

This means you should think ahead. If you know that it is a competitive market and you are not the only buyer, and if you don’t need the closing cost. This may be an area where you can have the upper hand. Maybe the competition is slim and your buyer’s offer is the only one. In this case, the seller covering closing cost is an incentive to get you to close the deal and save on closing cost.

• Read your contract
• Leave no blank spaces
• Make your best and reasonable offer
• As-Is contracts or addendum

Below are some of the details your buyers will need to provide after having their offer accepted.

• Name
• Address
• Phone Number
• SSN
• Birthday
• Email Address

Earnest money causes the buyer to have a vested interest and commitment to the contract you are intending to close. Inform the buyer that in some cases there may be additional funds required to close a contract, this will help eliminate surprises later in the real estate transaction.

Always advice your buyers to perform inspections, be on a safe spot. Some buyers prefer not to perform any inspections. This can tend to be mostly investors with cash deals however, home buyers with a conventional loan or other loans will have their bank require an inspection. Remember that home appraisals are required by the banks as well so advice your buyers. Let them know that close to the closing time, the lender will order the property to be appraised.

Now that your buyer’s purchase offer has been accepted by the home seller and you have chosen a loan and a lender, it’s time for you and your buyer to focus on the closing process. You’ll need to provide your lender with additional documents, stay alert for any required requests and notifications. Your home buyer will need to get a home inspection, they will need to shop for homeowner’s and title insurance. Most of the necessary documents your buyers bank will require prior to closing should have already been collected by you! The Realtor.

Signing your buyers closing documents is the final step. Take time to review them with your buyer carefully. Once you sign, you’re buyer is responsible for the mortgage loan so make sure they understand what they are getting into and do your best to avoid surprises that your buyers can run into in the future.