Buying a house is an important step in anyone’s life, and is usually fraught with care and consideration- nobody wants to throw a million dollars on a house on a whim. With house prices steadily increasing, the margin of error is getting smaller and smaller out of necessity, and new homebuyers need to take bigger risks to get a foot into the door. With that much stress and uncertainty, it’s understandable that someone who wants to live near the beach might just search Marshall White Homes for sale in Brighton Area and take the plunge from there, and while there’s nothing wrong with doing that there’s also nothing wrong with doing a lot of research first. This article is here to help kick start that very research to set you on the path to your first home.
The first thing to do when thinking about buying your home is to sit down with a pen and paper and write out what you want it to be. Visualize, in your mind, every conceivable aspect of the place including who will be living in it. Is it a house? An apartment? Do you have a family in it or is it all yours? By mentally placing yourself in your house a few years down the track, you know what you want now and what you should be looking for. Keep in mind that when buying a house, you can change things about it. Get building permits and knock that wall down, or the whole house if you’ve found the perfect block of land to build on. It’s not about what anyone else thinks when you’re working on your house; it’s what you want it to be.
The second thing to do is to section off areas on a map of the city in which you want to live. You’ve got your ideal house in your head and on paper now, use that to match its description to the suburbs it would likely be found in. Don’t go inner city if you’re looking for a big yard and a triple car garage, for instance. This cuts out many hours of unnecessary searching through listings in unsuitable neighborhoods, and allows you to focus on the things that matter most in your search- location location location.
The third thing to do is to go out and inspect. Don’t be afraid to call real estate agents and ask for a private inspection, and don’t be afraid to bombard said real estate agent with questions once you get there. You wouldn’t try to buy a car from a dealership without asking to test drive it, seeing the safety rating, checking the value and any known faults, and seeing what kind of a deal you could get, so why would you make an offer on a house that will cost you hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of dollars without asking what school zones it’s in, or the age and condition of the house. The agent should have no trouble answering your questions, and feeling a bit silly or direct by asking is much better than regretting not asking when your house isn’t what you wanted it to be.
Hopefully the above advice can save you a lot of time and trouble in your search for a house to call home, and allow for more time spent doing the fun stuff, like inspecting and planning your new home.
House in the sand image by Shutterstock.
