I want to buy a house – where do I start? When thinking of purchasing a house, there are logical steps to take. It may seem at first thought to begin searching homes on the internet. While this is a great source of information for the potential buyer, it is not the most important and crucial place to start.

First and foremost the buyer needs to find a lender they can trust. How can that be accomplished? Below are a few common ways to find a lender & Realtor when asking yourself, I want to buy a house, where do I start?Ask for referrals from your friends or family for both a Realtor and lender. Referrals are a fantastic way to find a professional.Search on Trulia.com & Activerain.com. Active agents that are engaged both in their physical communities as well as online communities can be found here. Once a few interesting prospects have been found, read their blog. A buyer can learn the style of the professional by the way they communicate with their audience via the internet. Finding a personality style to meet one’s needs is important as finding a professional with the most knowledge about their market.

Once you narrow down your persons of interest, send them a communication via YOUR favorite way to communicate. Some prefer text, email or social media, while others prefer to just pick up the phone. This will give the buyer a better understanding of how timely this professional responds to an inquiry. With all the difference means of communication these days, this step is important.

Whether you find the Realtor first or the lender first doesn’t truly matter. In many cases, a Realtor will surround themselves with very competent professionals that are an integral part of the transaction. Vice versa, the lender will have their finger on the pulse of the most effective agents in their area (in many cases).

Now that you’ve found your professionals, take the time to contact them and set an appointment. In the lender’s case the initial information can be gathered over the phone and necessary documents can be emailed or faxed. This process can take less than an hour. This is your ROAD-MAP. Now you know exactly where you are financially headed.

Putting the “cart before the horse’ so to speak in searching properties before the financial road-map can lead to disappointment. It’s never fun to get excited about a property only to find it is out of the buyer’s price range. Save yourself that frustration by following these steps above when thinking, I want to buy a house, where do I start?

Originally posted via Activerain.com 10/2/2011

1. You need a lender you can trust. You may not know one, so you may also start looking for a Realtor if you do not already have one. Whether you find your lender first or your Realtor first doesn’t make a difference. What does make a difference is that you have a good connection with the lender and he/she comes highly recommended OR you have found good reviews on the web. You need to be pre-approved by a lender before you engage a Realtor to start shopping.Once you’ve found the lender, make a call to them! It is quite simple to get the pre-approval process going. The conversation might take 30 minutes, but this is time well spent and is a necessary ‘piece of the puzzle”.  You do not need to get a pre-approval letter before finding a home. Simply give your Realtor the name and contact information for the lender.

2. Find a Realtor you can trust. Again, maybe you’ve already done this prior to finding the lender, but now that you are officially pre-approved, let your Realtor know your criteria. Here’s what I mean by that. Give your Realtor a list of your MINIMUM Criteria. See the example below:Maximum purchase price (you already know this because you’ve been pre-approved. NO MORE guessing)!

   #Bedrooms & Baths

   Desired Square Footage

   Desired Lot Size

   Desired Location

   Pool, No Pool or Doesn’t Matter (Important)

   Any Other Important Desires You Have For Your Home

   Ask your chosen Realtor to set you up on an automatic email notification system. It is best to use the system the Realtor uses. Many times 3rd party sites such as Trulia, Zillow, Redfin, etc are good sources to search properties, BUT the information can be VERY outdated.

3. Its time to go shopping. Let your Realtor know your top favorite properties. Ask them to get more information such as are they a short sale, are they a bank owned or is this a regular sale. This is important because it will affect your time-line to move in.. You may need a lesson on the differences between short sales and bank owned properties. This is VERY important information in today’s market.

Be sure to have fun along the way and remember….You will NEVER find the perfect house including ALL of your desires, but you will find something very close. You will find a house you will love and cherish so remember, you will need to bend on some of your wants. Following these 3 Easy Steps to Buying a House – Pleasanton CA Home Buying Tips applies to any market or location!

Originally Posted on Active Rain

www.Trivalleyhomes.listingbook.comis your answer. The MLS has provided each Realtor, as a part of their membership fees, a free Listingbook account. The thing is; many Realtors have not yet caught onto the idea or taken the time to learn about this great feature! I attended the first class offered by our MLS association. I immediately realized how helpful and beneficial this could be to my clients  searching the MLS for current East Bay, Tri Valley real estate information.  That’s when I created my www.Trivalleyhomes.listingbook.com  account.  I still have to tell some clients from time to time that other sites are outdated, and they still will send me a property and say ‘hey, what about this one?” only to hear me say, ‘It’s sold and not updated on that site!’  Its okay, everyone will catch on soon enough.
If you’d like your own TriValleyHomes.ListingBook.com account to search the MLS for current east bay Tri Valley Real Estate information, all you have to do is either go to the website and sign up, or let me know and I can send you an invitation. Then just log in and you will get a user name and password. You can view all the same information I do with the exception of the confidential remarks that clients are not privy to receive without the assistance of a Realtor. Check it out, you’ll probably love it. Oh, and I forgot to mention, you can even get accurate SOLD information! Yes, that’s right.
Searching the MLS for Current East Bay, Tri Valley Real Estate Information has never been more accurate! You can be assured that what you see is what I see, just not all the other details. Thanks Bay East Association of Realtors! What a great tool you’ve provided to us!

 ”Mortgage backs or (MBS) have taken a roller coaster ride the last week and a half; as they go down, rates go up. This negative movement seems unprecedented and beyond the word ‘volatile’. Trying to advise clients as to whether to lock or float has been very difficult.  Large downward movements have been followed by small corrections and then another large downward move” Kurt explained to me. 

 He further went on to say that “Bill Gross, the President of Pimco said earlier this week that the appetite for bonds and MBS is dwindling and we should see higher and higher rates. With China and other foreign countries not buying our treasuries and our government really becoming the only buyer of our own home grown debt, which creates more debt, it seems his outlook is very accurate”.

 Kurt believes the treasury and the Fed have backed off from their position of targeting an interest rate. He said, “Last year and then Secretary Paulson stated that the treasury would target an interest rate of 4.5%. After 2.5 months and much government intervention, they were able to achieve that. Now it doesn’t seem that is their goal, so free market is now in play and more government interaction will lead to more fear of inflation”. In the opinion of Kurt Kessler, rates will go from 5.5% to high 6%’s and low 7%’s (depending on loan type, size and credit score) in the next quarter.

 He also believes, the demand of money is also increasing due to the affordability of properties and that is truly the light at the end of the tunnel. “The 2 things that we know will hold true,” Kurt told me, “is the first-time homebuyers will do very well in this market and secondly, FHA and VA loans will continue to be the product of choice”.

If you’ve been on the fence about interest rates, would like to get pre-qualified or would like to ask some of your own questions, I welcome you to contact Kurt directly. The path to home ownership is still very attainable.

Residential Real Estate in Pleasanton is the topic of the upcoming Town Hall Meeting to be held Wednesday, May 27 from 7:00 – 9:00. A Panel of experts will provide insight as to the state of the market. This event will be held at the Veterans Hall in Pleasanton and is hosted by The City of Pleasanton, Pleasanton Chamber of Commerce, Pleasanton Weekly and the Bay East Association of REALTORS®. The event is open to the public at no cost to attend.

The following evening, Thursday May 28,  Kurt Kessler of Pleasanton Mortgage and Rhonda Fee of Realty World Town & Country are holding a FREE Home Buyer Seminar at 6:30 PM at The Rose Hotel in Pleasanton

The seminar is designed to answer many of your questions including:

• The difference between REO, Bank Owned and Short Sale Properties.
• The new role the FHA plays in both the mortgage and real estate markets.
• Seller concessions…What are they, how can they help YOU buy a home?
• Pre-approval vs. Pre-qualified…What’s the difference?
• Credit Scores and How to Improve them!
• Understanding the Stimulus Plan’s $8,000 Tax Credit for qualifying income (ends Dec. 1, 2009)
• Why we have “artificially” low interest rates and what might be next?
• The home/loan buying process and strategies

There is NO COST to attend, but space is limited. To make your reservation, please contact Rhonda Fee at 925.200.0827 or email rhonda. mailto:rhonda@rhondafee.com.