5 major things you should NOT do when buying a home in the Albuquerque area

 

(Transcript Snippet): “Tego:

 

Tracy. I want to talk to buyers right now. And I think this is an important conversation to have because the market is so tight. There’s so few choices for home buyers today that they need to not make any mistakes. If they want to get that home. And we have a list of five things you should not do or mistakes that buyers we’ve seen make that they need to just be aware of so that they can get that dream home, get the home. They always want it. You know, interest rates are great. You gotta lock that, that interest rate in and get that home for the longterm. And in this one, I it’s going to sound very self-serving because we’re real estate agents, but it says

 

Tracy:

 

Don’t hire an inexperienced agent. Yeah. So the average agent, you know, across the industry sells five, 10 houses a year, not a lot, you know, to really hone the craft. I think you have to be in it day in, day out, work with people who are making lots of offers and getting a lot of homes under contract and really knowing what it takes today to write an offer that can be accepted, knowing other agents, knowing that they want to work with you. And when it’s somebody who’s inexperienced, doesn’t really know the ins and outs of how to really structure something so that you can be the one whose offer gets accepted. It’s it’s hard.

 

Tego:

 

Yeah. Th th ex experience does matter. And again, it’s sounds very self-serving, but you do need somebody that is your advocate on your side to get you that home, get you that home that you want. The next thing is the home inspection in this market, people may be tempted to say, you know what, I, I just want the house. I know I’m going to waive the home inspection. So my offer gets picked over any other offer that, that, that seller has, and that would be desirable to a seller, right? Seller says, Oh, well, they’re not going to get a home inspection. Great. We don’t have to worry about, you know, do any repairs for this person. I would never, ever recommend that somebody waive the option to do home inspections.

 

Tracy:

 

So even in our market, our purchase agreement says, you can do any inspections you want, you don’t have to list them if you’re paying for them as a buyer, correct. You only have to list inspections if you want the seller to pay for them. So really there’s a way to structure it and make sure that you still have the opportunity. And sometimes we’ve seen sellers, who’ve done an inspection already. They see here’s the inspection report. And the buyer might say, well, I don’t need any more. I’ll just accept that one. And even then you don’t have to do that. It’d be better just to like,

 

Tego:

 

Think twice about that. You need a home inspector. That’s working for you as a buyer, right? Somebody that you’ve contracted to do the home inspection, not that their job is to go and pick the home apart and farm find all these awful things so that you can negotiate down the price or something. The idea is that, you know what you’re getting into when you’re purchasing this home,

 

Tracy:

 

Right. I was going to say for resale homes, we’re not talking new construction for resale homes, have the opportunity to assess, you know, the, the condition of the home and make sure you’re comfortable with it. Not that you get to change it all or require that the seller do things right. It’s, it’s more for you to understand it. Houses are basically used, right? It’s not like you can expect it to be a new house, but knowing as a buyer, what the conditions are and what major things you might have to budget for in the is really helpful.

 

Tego:

 

Yeah. The next two things here, when we’re, again, we’re talking about, you know, buyer mistakes and mistakes we’ve seen in this, then the next two kind of go together, Tracy, and we’ve seen it. We’ve definitely seen this one. I’ve seen people not get their dream house. Yeah. So they’ve, they’ve, they’ve gone, they’ve talked to their lender, they’ve got a pre-approval from a lender to do their mortgage. They’ve done their credit application. You know, the, the, the, the lender starts working through the whole process to get them approved for the loan. And they go, and they change jobs midway.

 

Tracy:

 

It can happen that you can still buy a house by changing jobs. But if typically, if you change career fields altogether, there’s some sort of waiting period there to make sure that your new career field is, is a winner for you. And oftentimes what we’ve seen T goes, we’re already under contract to buy a house. And the home buyer changes jobs after we’ve already gotten a house under contract, and that’s challenging. That’s when you need the best lenders in town, working for you to figure out how to still make it. So you can buy that house.

 

Tego:

 

You know, if you do anything once, especially once you received your pre-approval, if you do anything around, you know, changing your job, changing your marital status, we’ve seen that one, hon Tracy any of that stuff is going to affect the ability for the loan to get approved. So it’s just something to keep in mind. And then the next one, along with it,

 

Tracy:

 

Right? Making some credit purchases, so opening, maybe a new line of credit. So what happens sometimes is people will get a house under contract. We’re working towards the closing and they go to I’m like, who’s still open, best buy. And they open a credit card with best buy to buy the new washer, dryer, fridge.

 

Tego:

 

They go, they go to the furniture store, they go to American furniture and they open a whole line of credit to get all the furniture for their new house. And, and all of a sudden, you know, their credit hit their credit. Yeah.

 

Tracy:

 

Can change their ability to buy a house. We’ve seen we’ve seen people buy new vehicles,

 

Tego:

 

Vehicles, and the biggest one we’ve seen, right.

 

Tracy:

 

Getting alone for a new vehicle, which all of a sudden changes their monthly available income to put towards the house. And we’ve seen people not be able to close on the house because they bought a vehicle

 

Tego:

 

Debt to income ratios, get, get out of whack because now they have to calculate that new payment that wasn’t there before. And so, yeah, you know, once again, when you’re, when you’re applying for a mortgage, you want to walk very lightly,

 

Tracy:

 

Listen to your lender and really understand what you should or shouldn’t do. And if you want to do something that seems like it might impact your financial status, talk to the lender first.

 

Tego:

 

Well, in another one, let me actually just throw into this. Just a side note is you get a gift from grandma and it’s $10,000 and it hits your bank account. That’s going to be a red flag. They’re going to say, okay, you need to document where that money came from. So again, anything that affects your finances or your financial, you just want to be very cautious and talk to your lender as you’re going through the process, right?

 

Tracy:

 

The last one and there’s others, but this is an interesting one. And it’s don’t necessarily choose the cheapest homeowners insurance for your new house. And really this is one that I think is hard because you really need to understand homeowners insurance and feel like you’ve got great confidence in the provider that they’re going to look at it and not strip out things to make it a more affordable home insurance policy that are going to be very difficult. Should you need a claim, have a claim and you find out, well, you don’t have coverage.

 

Tego:

 

Yeah. It’s a, it’s a pretty important thing to have a good conversation with a trusted, you know, insurance person, you know, obviously their job is to sell insurance and they’re gonna, you know, have they have all these different products and riders and additional things that you can add onto a homeowners policy. You just want to make sure that you’re covered when, you know, again, if something bad happened, you have coverage, you understand what you’re getting and what you’re not getting. And I think along with that, we’re talking about homeowners insurance, or, you know, fire insurance or, or hazard insurance, whatever you want to call it, not a home warranty, which is a different animal that has to do with, you know, if something breaks in the house. And again, that’s another thing that you should seriously look at. It’s, it’s a relatively inexpensive peace of mind especially maybe if you are going to waive some of those repairs on the home or the age of the hot water heater or the age of the furnace or one of those things. Right?