Congratulations on becoming homeowners! Now that we’re a month in, we’re excited to share our homebuying journey with you. From finding the perfect place to dealing with unexpected surprises like our air conditioner icing up inside, every step taught us valuable lessons. Whether you’re starting your own homebuying adventure or just curious about the process, we hope our experience sheds light and helps you navigate smoothly, including understanding the importance of heat pump repair to maintain your home’s comfort. Stay tuned as we uncover more about our new home and the joys (and challenges) of settling in. You can also check Home Builders Pittsburgh PA, So let’s jump right on in! Also, if you notice a malfunction in your unit, contact Greenwood AC Repair experts immediately. If your plumbing system also got damaged, you may seek burst pipe repair seattle wa services.
PHASE 1: Laying the Foundation
David and I had several late-night talks about our dream home. From where it would be located to what it would look like from the inside out. Our favorite pastime, even before the engagement, was to sit and scroll on Zillow and text each other different houses to see each other’s style and taste. Of course, once we finally got engaged the talks shifted to be way more serious and emotional than ever before. There was no more daydreaming – this was real life now people. Finding our home is now our reality and a lot of hard decisions had to be made. We spent weeks going back and forth on location and deciding what side of town would work best for both of us. Then came the conversation of new construction vs. pre-existing/used home. Lastly, the more grueling topic – BUDGET! When it comes to budget, you really should sit and review all of the bills that you (and your partner if you are purchasing with someone) have and be honest about what you can afford. Don’t try to keep up with Joneses! Get what you love and what you can afford period the end! Even though we are only highlighting a few topics (because trust there were way more), a lot of questions could not be answered for us until we completed our pre-qualification.
Completing your pre-qualification is VERY important! You literally cannot even start the home buying process without it. Just to take a step back, a pre-qualification lets you know the amount of money you may be eligible for/how much the bank is willing to lend you based upon income/employment, credit history, etc. Once this is done then the loan officer that you are working with will give you a form with all of the other proper information on it that you can take with you on your tour of houses so that you can be seen as a serious buyer. During this time you should also start looking for your real estate agent! Do not think that you or your significant other can go through this process on your own. It literally costs you nothing to get a realtor and is seriously only for your overall gain. Throughout your entire process, your realtor is going to be the only person there, besides yourself, that will advocate and have your best interest at heart. Essentially they are on your team, not the builders. Your realtor will not just help you find your dream home but will help you find your loan, breakdown your pre-qualification, help negotiate your closing price, explain some things that don’t make sense to you, etc. So long story short pick your realtor wisely.
PHASE 2: The Ground Work
Speaking strictly for us we only went house hunting one day! Due to Covid, we did a lot of our groundwork online and spent random days joy riding around different neighborhoods to come to an agreement of what we were looking for. We initially decided that we wanted to get our finances in check first (it’s good to make sure your credit card bills and any other debt is paid off as low as possible before allowing companies to start running your credit/looking into your accounts) and scheduled to officially start the house-hunting process with our realtor in mid-September of 2020. In preparation for our house-hunting we made sure we completed/brought the following things with us:
- Created a list of our Top 4 houses we wanted to visit
- At this point, we knew that we wanted a new build, but we were not opposed to getting a pre-existing/used home if it felt right
- We also took the time to map out the most efficient route to take to each location so that we were not wasting any time or gas
- Pre-qualification Form
- Checkbook (important just in case you find the one and need to put down your earnest money down which is typically 1% of the home or $1,000 for a lot of cases but could be more)
- We listed out our nice to haves vs must-haves so that we were on the same page when looking for potential homes
- Go in with a gameplay. If you know from your pre-qualification that the bank will only give you a certain amount of money, but you have more on the side to allocate towards the overall cost of the home then that’s your plan. Your realtor shouldn’t even let you go over your allocated budget, but be prepared if you fall in love with something that is over what your loan amount is.
- Most importantly don’t feel rushed! House-hunting can be a long and drawn-out process so just because we found ours on the first day doesn’t mean that is going to be everyone’s story. This is a lot of money that you will be spending and a serious commitment so please take your time!
Once the day finally came, we followed the schedule and went to our top pick first. Our top pick was an Ashton Woods Home that was everything we wanted and more in the virtual tour. We couldn’t wait to see it in person and felt like this would be a one-and-done situation! As soon as we walked inside the plan that was under construction and sold our hearts dropped. It was so much smaller in person than what we initially expected especially for the price. So we (mainly me) dusted off our disappointment and moved on to our scheduled program. It felt like the longest day of our lives walking in and out and around tons of model homes. After making several pit stops to look at other model homes with different Lantern Roofs/neighborhoods that were not on our list, we finally made it to our 2nd pick, a Meritage Home, that David found on Zillow just 2 weeks prior. As soon as we walked into the model home we both were sold! It had everything that both of us wanted from the open concept layout to even being more spacious and cheaper than the Ashton Woods Home. We knew that we wanted to move forward with it and made that clear with our realtor as well. We decided to speak to our now Meritage seller and she gave us all of the instructions that we needed to do in order to try to move forward and pre-qualify for the home so that we could potentially begin the process since they were planning to start production for that plan very soon. We went home completed everything as instructed that night, got a call the next morning to come back with our earnest money to hold the lot until the production began, and from that point on we knew we had a long road ahead of us.
PHASE 3: The Long Road
As stressful as the building process was it was just as amazing watching everything unfold. Everything went so fast in September & October and started to slow down as we geared near the holidays as our seller instructed that it would. The full building process took just about 5 months (broke ground in September and closed in February) since we have an inventory stock home. An inventory stock home is a home that is built to be set in stone, literally, meaning that you do not get to go to the design studio and make customizations to your home. This can be a good route to go if you want to make sure that you truly stay on budget and not get out of control with all of the upgrades and add ons that they will show you in the design studio, for our process, we were able to pick the package for our kitchen (which got messed up anyway, but that’s a long story that we will probably discuss on the IG live lol), but we were not able to make any adjustments to the exterior of our home since that was predetermined by the builder/neighborhood ahead of time. Then, we also hired soft strip demolition services to remove unnecessary things.
We do suggest that you come up with some kind of plan to go visit the progress of your home to make sure everything is on track and to see if you notice changes or issues that need to be addressed. We heard a lot of people saying that they went out to their properties at least 4 times a week, but with our schedules and a lot of construction going on in our section of the neighborhood, we decided to go just about every Sunday when the workers were not there (of course this was also partially due to COVID as well). It is very important to take pictures and keep a running list of the problems to give to your seller or project manager to address. For us, we (and our realtor) were in direct contact with our seller and she would report to the project manager on our behalf. We have heard some people that have gone through our situation as well mainly due to project managers not wanting to give their contact information out due to people having a lot of questions and calling them every day while they are trying to work. Now there are some who have a close relationship with their project manager so it just depends on how your builder typically operates.
Also simultaneously during this time, you will also be working with your loan consultant (or officer) to complete any paperwork along with negotiating your closing cost, interest rate, and loan details. A lot of you guys have reached out to us asking how much should you save for a downpayment and the short answer is that it depends on the price of your home, your interest rate, and your income but you should plan to pay around 3-5% of your buying price. So for example, if you are purchasing a $250,000 home then your downpayment will most likely be around $7,500-$12,500. With this being said it is really important to save as much as possible, but also do not get discouraged because there are so many downpayment assistance programs out there and incentives from your builder that you can possibly get that can help you get into your dream home!
The biggest takeaway from this portion of the home buying process is to not be afraid to ask questions if you don’t understand something especially if you are a first-time homebuyer. You will literally be surrounded by a ton of experts so soak up as much knowledge as you can so that you can be prepared for your next real estate purchase or to even counsel someone else!
PHASE 4: Closing on Our Dream Home!
February 12th, 2021 will forever be a day we’ll always remember! All of the stress and anxiety was worth it and we finally got the keys to our new home. In order to get to this day, we had a long week of first wiring the money for our closing cost as well as pre/final walkthroughs. These walkthroughs are probably the most important part of the entire process and where you need to pay close attention. We suggest that you take as many people with you as possible to look at every nook and cranny of your soon-to-be home! It is so hard to just take one or two sets of eyes and think that you will find every single issue or mistake in your home. The best thing to do is to have a good army with you that preferably have experience and know the right things to look for when it comes to homes (from painting, grout, etc). You typically have these walkthroughs the week before or of your closing date, but what is not mandatory is having a third-party inspector come in and evaluate your home. The third-party inspector is similar to the realtor that they work on your behalf expect you do have to pay for them. We decided to have an inspector come in two weeks before closing to make sure we had a detailed report of everything our builder needed to check and fix that was out of our expertise to even know about like our roofing, electrical work, plumbing/drainage system, the laying of the lawn, etc. You can go with any company you would like to do the inspection (your realtor may have some contacts for you if not feel free to ask around or even Google), but we would suggest to any and everyone that you should invest in this so that you have a detailed report on file to always refer to with your builder. When it comes down to the pre/final walkthroughs don’t worry if you find things during that time that may take them longer to correct. Of course, no one wants their closing date pushed back (ours got pushed back at the top of the year because we realized they forgot the bench in our shower), but there may be scenarios where the builder can fix something even after your closing date and that can just be outlined in your contract that they are still working on a portion of your house. Every builder has their own guidelines/protocol of how they will go about fixing things for you especially if it is within the first year of you having the home and find things while living there that are not your fault. We know that this ties into a huge concern for a lot of people and why many choose not to purchase a home. It is true that a lot of the fixes/maintenance will fall on you in a home versus living in an apartment, but you will be given a warranty on a lot of the things in your home in case anything were to possibly go wrong. Long story short, in our opinion (and in the opinion of a lot of homeowners we know) it feels so good to actually own instead of rent! We can do what we want and as we please with our own space and we love knowing that our money is going into something that is truly ours instead of just renting a space without anything in return. If you want to get an idea on how you want your home to look like, visit sites like https://www.thesun.co.uk/fabulous/29551605/real-estate-ibiza-design-tips-transforming-yard-mediterranean-paradise/.
We hope that we answered a lot of your questions! Make sure you also go to my Instagram page (@kaylashaerobert) for our IG live footage on March 20th, 2021 at 7pm CST. For everyone asking we do have only one registry for our wedding/new home and you can find it on www.hooeyeverafter.com. Thank you so much for the love and support as always!
