Get Informed About Buying Property
Now that you know what your credit score is and learned about home loans for first time buyers you can take this information and start researching the market.
This can be done several ways:
- Get in a car and drive around to look for neighborhoods you like.
- Go to open houses.
- Go online and use tools such as:
- RealtyTrac.com
- Foreclosure.com
- local government web sites
Today so much information is available on the web. Go surfing. Get educated. Become empowered.
On-Line Resources
RealtyTrac is an industry leader on tracking foreclosure homes, with simple to use search features that will quickly show you all available foreclosure homes in your neighborhood. You get a 7 day free trial to explore all that RealtyTrac has to offer, so check realtytrac.com out now!
Foreclosure.com is a great way to find foreclosed properties. They also show you auction properties you can bid on, where you can find some outstanding bargains on homes. If you are looking for foreclosed homes, what makes more sense than foreclosure.com?
Government Sites
Most cities or counties have government web sites that contain a section that allows you to search records. Most of the time the county you live in will provide a web site for accessing the property records. For example, Las Vegas is in Clark County, and Clark County has the Open Web Mapper site that allows you to search records by owner name, address or cross street.
By using this tool, you can pull up records that show how much homes in a neighborhood you are interested in have sold for. If you see a home you are interested in, you can look to see what other homes in the neighborhood have sold for. Many cities and counties have similar web sites to access property records. Google your county recorder to start, and you should be able to find links to the recorder’s site, or look for the planning division, which is in charge of overseeing land use.
Search Criteria
Once you have had a chance to check out Foreclosure.com and RealtyTrac.com, it is time to think about what you are looking for in a home.
The following are common search criteria that allow you to narrow your search down to a manageable size. If you don’t weed out homes that fit your needs you’ll end up with a list of thousands of homes, and after looking at about 10 they all start to look alike. Then you have a hard time remembering which house had the features you liked. So here’s a list of things to consider when researching new homes;
- Price
- Size – by square foot of the house
- Number of bedrooms
- Number of bathrooms
- 1 or 2 Story
- How many car garage
- Do you want a pool or spa
- Do you have a preference for a particular school district or specific school
- How big of a lot do you want
The more criteria you can decide in advance the easier your search will be. Some of the criteria will work themselves out due to the price of the house you can afford (meaning you won’t be looking at 10,000 square foot homes if you can afford $250,000).
Once you’ve done a little market research online, go look at open houses in the area you’re interested in. But a word of caution here – try to look at houses within your price range.
It’s always fun to look at house for sale, but if you look at only houses you can not afford, then the houses you can afford will pale in comparison. Think about buying a new car – if you can afford a Honda, but you only look at Mercedes Benz, the Honda won’t seem adequate when it’s time to buy.
Save yourself some agony – go look at the dream houses after you’ve bought your first house.
Now let’s go find a real estate agent.
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