The Real Estate Home Buying Process
I am often asked by clients for a brief overview of the process of buying Real Estate so I figured it would be helpful to write a post outlining the steps of the Real Estate home buying process from beginning to end.Step 1: Find A Real Estate Agent – I firmly believe that smart, successful people surround themselves with smart, experienced experts that can help guide them to a well thought out decision. If you don’t buy and sell Real Estate every day all day for a living, how could you possibly understand the local Real Estate home buying process and all of the nuances and intricacies of the available inventory, purchase contract, title insurance and mortgage process? How could you possibly know what a good deal or a great deal looks like? You can’t! Get referrals from friends, use Google to search, go to open houses and keep looking until you find someone you feel has the experience, resume and personality to represent you and your interests. It costs the home buyer NOTHING and can save you a great deal of stress in the long run.Step 2: Get Preapproved – Getting a preapproval or prequalification should always be the very first step when preparing to purchase Real Estate, but not surprisingly most home buyers begin searching for homes before they really know what they can afford to spend. I made getting preapproved step 2 of the Real Estate home buying process only because many times the best lender recommendations will come from your real estate agent. The housing market crash has created an ever changing lending environment that is difficult for even full time real estate professionals to keep up with. Lending requirements change, PMI and MIP charges increase, loan limits increase and decrease, condos become unwarrantable and interest rates fluctuate every day. The only accurate way to have a realistic idea of your borrowing power is by getting preapproved by a reputable lender. Remember too that just because you can afford to spend a certain amount does not mean you have to spend that amount. Determine a monthly payment you are comfortable with and only look at homes with prices that fall into that monthly payment range.Step 3: Create A Hierarchy Of Needs and Wants – Most buyers of real estate are not sure what they ultimately want other than they know they want a great deal. Buyers should consider all of their needs and wants before looking at any homes. Items up for consideration are: price, monthly payment, beds/baths, square footage, outdoor space, school district, parking, location, walkability, floorplan and neighborhood. Be realistic about what you can afford and then determine what features are essential, and which would be nice but are not deal breakers. Be prepared to decide if you would rather have your dream home in your second or third favorite neighborhood or a nice home in your favorite neighborhood.Step 4: Searching For Real Estate – If you’re working with a local Real Estate agent he or she should be searching the MLS for new listings on a daily basis. You shouldn’t have to send properties to your agent; your agent should be emailing you properties. If you have a proactive, hands on personality and you want to be involved in the search process there are numerous local and national real estate websites that offer free access to the entire local MLS. Pay careful attention to all of the home’s details, not just the price. Variables like real estate taxes, condo fees, HOA fees, building maintenance fees (co-ops) and amenities like a pool, gym, and parking can affect affordability considerations and must be carefully compared between properties.Step 5: Submitting An Offer – Submitting an offer can seem intimidating, especially to first time home buyers, but if done correctly there is little risk involved. Most standard agreements of sale includes contingencies that allow the buyer to terminate a signed purchase contract without penalty under certain circumstances. The usual contingencies are for a mortgage, inspections, and an appraisal but there many others that can be included to protect the buyer if needed. If you need to sell a home before making a purchase let your agent know that you will need a home sale contingency. Be open and honest with your real estate agent so he or she can make sure you are 100% protected by the purchase agreement. Research relevant comparable home sales and try to determine a fair price range to pay for the home. Find out what the average asking price to sale price ratio in the home’s neighborhood has been for the past 3-6 months and make sure your initial offer makes sense. Finally, try to make your offer as appealing to the Seller as possible without compromising any of your interests or goals.Step 6: Accepted Offer – Time to celebrate right? Wrong!Getting your offer accepted is the beginning of the due diligence process, not the end. The contingency periods allow you to inspect the home, shop around for mortgages and perform all of your due diligence on the home. Make sure that the home and all of its systems are in the condition they appear to be. Talk to two or three reputable lenders and make sure you can obtain a loan with an interest rate and fees that you can afford. Contact an insurance company and get quotes for home owner’s insurance and a title insurance company to order title insurance. The lender you select will hire an appraiser to perform an appraisal of the property. Your real estate agent is responsible for overseeing the transaction, coordinating with the lender, the title insurance company, the homeowner’s insurance company and providing any recommendations you need along the way.Step 7: Settlement – If your Real Estate Agent has done his job well settlement will be a fun and relaxed atmosphere. Prior to settlement you should perform a pre-settlement walk through to make sure the home is in the same condition as when you signed the purchase contract. Make sure all agreed upon repairs were completed and that there is no new damage to the property. Prior to settlement you should also contact the utility companies that provide electric, gas, and cable/internet. The title company may handle the transfer of water and sewer. All you will need to bring to settlement is a check for the amount needed at closing and your state issued identification. Once all the paperwork is signed you can relax and celebrate. Now you are officially a home owner!
Writing Articles to Promote Your Web Site – Article 2 – How to Do It
Your articles should be written in a general way – don’t directly promote your product or service in the body of the article, you can add contact details in the article Resource Box (see below). Make the article a useful, informative piece of text – if you provide enough authoritative content then the articles on your web site will make your web site a source of reliable, useful information that people will recommend to their friends and thus increase the number of visits to your site.The structure of any article written for your own web site is up to you, but be sure to include your key words and phrases – without over-doing it! On your own web site you can openly promote your products and services.And talking of your web site – take a careful look at it – are there pages on your web site that, with a bit of tweaking, could be made into articles? This may also apply to PDFs that you make available from your web site – don’t overlook your current assets!When writing for publication on article web site you need to create or supply the following components, though not all article web sites will employ them:
A title for your article: make it short, snappy and attractive!
A list of key words and phrases that relate to the article only, not to your whole web site
A brief summary of the article: a couple of sentences will be enough and try not to just copy out the first paragraph!
The article: aim for at least 250 words, though some article web sites require at least 500 words. The maximum length is usually 2000 words, but if you’ve written that many words you should consider splitting the article into two or more articles!
The resource box: this should contain a brief biography of the author – a couple of sentences is enough – and contact details: your web site address and an email address. These will normally be “live” links to your site
A photograph: not compulsory, but it’s nice for readers to see the person who wrote the site and it makes the article more human.
When you’ve done all that check it very carefully then submit it to your chosen article web site or get your webmaster to do it for you, making sure that you are acknowledged as the author, and get them to add it to your web site too.If you’re planning to put the same article on your web site and submit it to article web sites it is best to add it to your site first, then, perhaps a few days later, submit it to article publishing web sites. By publishing it in this order you are establishing yourself as the author – it is possible for people to copy some or all of an article from an article web site and claim it as their own, but by publishing it first on your web site you have made it clear that it’s your original work.Articles published by article web sites can be copied legitimately – if the established terms and conditions are followed. These typically stipulate that the whole article must be copied, including the resource box and an acknowledgement of the article publishing web site on which the article was first published. Having your article copied like this is a further boost – it will now be circulated even further and will have all your contact details included!Some article web site allow you add formatting features such as bold, italic, underline and bullets; other allow you to create hypertext links in the body of the text and/or the resource box. Some sites make this an easy process – others require you to enter html code – if you’re not sure how to do this then take professional advice. This is, however, worth doing since you can create links to your web site using your key words or phrases – but don’t over do it, keep it to two or three links per article.What are you waiting for – get writing!
What are Google Gadgets?
You’ve probably heard about Google’s search engine, but have you heard about Google Gadgets? At its simplest, Google Gadgets allow you to customize your Google homepage with fresh content from the content providers that you choose.Hard to visualize right? Maybe, a step-by-step example will help you better.Step 1. Visit http://www.google.com/ig.Here you should see some examples of Google Gadgets with live content. If you’ve already logged in to your Google Account, skip to Step 3. Otherwise, click on the “Sign In” link at the upper-right hand corner of the screen.Step 2. Signin to your Google Account.Signin with your Google email and password. If you don’t have an account with Google yet, you can click on the link at the bottom-right section of the screen that says “Create an account now.” After signing in you should be back to your initial page in Step 1 with a slight difference.Step 3. Click on the “Add Content” link.The “Add Content” link at the upper-left corner of the screen leads you to a page showing various content providers. There are thousands of Google Gadgets available out there providing a great variety – fresh news, stock quotes, clocks, stock charts, jokes of the day, quotes of the day, to do lists, weight trackers, dictionaries, glossaries, games, and a lot, lot more. Because, there are thousands of content providers, you can choose to search for a gadget that you like, so that’s what we’ll do next.Step 4. Type “articledigger” in the search box and click “Search Homepage Content”.This should pull up a Google Gadget provided by ArticleDigger.com. Of course, you can change the search phrase to anything you want to suit your preferences. But for this example, do try the given search phrase as the succeeding steps depend on it.Step 5. Click the “Add it now” button.If all goes well, your gadget would have been added to your Google HomePage.Step 6. Go back to the homepage at http://www.google.com/igAs you can see, a section in your Google homepage now displays content from ArticleDigger.com. If you will notice, each section has an “edit” link at the top-right corner of each gadget. This typically allows you to customize the gadget to your preferences. We will try to do that next.Step 7. Click on the “edit” link for the ArticleDigger.com Gadget.The “edit” link now shows you the options that control the gadget. For this particular gadget, you can choose which topic you want, the text font and text size, and the foreground and background colors. Google gadgets allow you to change preferences to customize the resulting content for you.Step 8. Make some changes then click “Save”Voila! Your preferences would have changed the look and feel of the Google Gadget.ConclusionGoogle Gadgets offer you a way to get content personalized to your needs. With thousands of available gadgets, you can have a field day picking the content you want. Enjoy!