Scratch on the surface of internet and you will be flooded with advice on how to make your home buying experience the best. This post isn’t supposed to repeat all the usual stuff. Read on to know some of the best kept secrets of the trade.
Going to buy a new home? All set to make the biggest investment of your life? Are you sure you want to invest your hard earned savings in an immovable and non-liquid asset like property? If the above questions generate a confident affirmative in response than you are probably ready to buy a new house. For all those who paused for even a moment, give your mind some more time to think about it, because, seems like you aren’t ready to take the plunge as yet. This post is for the people who fall in former category. Here are some of the tips to make sure buying a new property is a memorable experience. It will be the biggest purchase of your life, your home will become the biggest part of your total net worth and therefore, small mistakes can cost large.
A first time home buyer? Attend a property seminar
If this is the first time you will be putting yourself in the position of property buyer than make sure to attend a training seminar or a home buyer conference and augment your knowledge about various terms used in real estate. Making the wrong choice just because you didn’t understand a particular term is the worse way of committing a blunder, a mistake that will keep coming back to haunt you as long as you live. Another way to get in the know of things is having discussions and tete-a-tete with multiple real estate agents. You can field your queries and questions as they come to your mind. Internet is a good resource of everything under the sun, leave alone real estate. There are hundreds of articles on a single topic, which gives rise to a harmless risk of getting lost in the labyrinth of information.
Work out the true cost of owning a home
However deft you might be at money matters, buying a new property is such a complex process that it is natural to overlook some of the costs of owning a home. While ultimately you will have to pay for these hidden costs, their unplanned nature causes a lot of unnecessary discomfort and agony. Thus be comprehensive while calculating the costs of owning a new home. Here is a check list against which you can match up and compare your own list:
• Mortgage arrangement fee: The fee you will paying the lender for arranging the mortgage, mostly non-refundable
• Valuation fee: Another fee the lender charges to evaluate your property
• Legal fee: Depending on the purchase price, the legal fee will vary from lender to lender.
• Stamp duty: After a certain limit, the purchase falls in the tax ambit and you will have to shell out money for the government in the form of stamp duty.
• Repairs: If you are buying a resale property keep some of your cash for the repair works
• Furnishing: Do not forget to include furnishing costs as the new place will inevitably generate a demand of new furniture All these expenses are of course, in addition to the actual price you will be paying to buy the place
Choose the right property finding methods
Long gone are the days when the buyers were at the mercy of real estate agents to find a good property worth buying. If you are still living in those times, then this should be a wakeup call for you. With the advent of internet and emergence of online classified sites, finding a new property has become as easy as it can get. Moreover, these sites provide with various filters such as price range, locality, property types, mortgage options and what not. The best thing is that most of the sites compete with each other to earn their viewers loyalty and hence the winners at the end is the”end-buyer”,. This doesn’t mean that you should drop the idea of asking out real estate agents for finding you a good property. In fact nothing can replace a knowledgeable realty agent. But still it helps to know through these classified sites whether your real estate agent is speaking the truth or just playing you along.
Author Bio:
Delhi born Saurabh Tyagi loves writing, and frequently puts pen to paper every now and then for topics such as serviced apartments for sale and commercial real estate property, buying a home . Currently he writes on behalf of a leading real estate site 99acres.com.