First Steps to Buying a Home
An Inspector turned Realtor 
? Thank you Tracy Griffin from Inspect-it First.
No matter how well you can picture your dream house and communicate your ideal to a Realtor, the house you finally fall in love with may have little resemblance to the image you started out with. But you have to begin somewhere, and a detailed wish list is a great head start. When you start looking at houses, this information will be valuable to a Realtor as he or she matches your requirements to available houses.
Visit a loan officer. The best way to learn what you can afford is to get prequalified for a loan. Your Realtor may recommend someone or you can just walk into the office of a local lender. You’ll walk away with a good idea of how your income, assets and liabilities translate into what you can afford, and it can also help your chances of beating out the competition in a sellers market.
Do the math. You can also do a simple calculation on your own. Broker wisdom says that monthly payments should be 25 to 33 percent of your monthly gross income. To calculate: Take your monthly income before taxes, including all sources, and divide it by four. Subtract from this figure the total amount you pay per month in debts. The result is the lower end of what you can reasonably afford to pay on a monthly basis. After deducting monthly homeowners insurance and property tax payments, you’ll see approximately what you can afford for your monthly loan payment.
Now that you have an idea of what you can afford, you can focus on whether you’re in the market for a condominium, co-op, townhouse, single-family detached home or – hey, it happens – a mansion that will accommodate 20 of your closest friends.
Any Real Estate questions ? Please call this Realtor: Gladys, at 610-972 3545