First-time Home Buyer Steps Part 6

Making an offer:

You've found your REALTOR, a great loan and lender and have been out shopping for homes; and now you've found it. The One. Your first house! Your REALTOR can and should do a market analysis on the home to give you a good feel for its current market value (just like he or she would do for a seller to determine the RIGHT price or it).

The next thing you need to do is make an offer on it. This will be in terms of filling out a contract to submit to the seller. The contracts are fairly in-depth and I'll probably go into them at a later date....know this: it is wise to go through every paragraph with your REALTOR. Make certain that you understand what you are signing and it is ALWAYS recommended that you have an attorney.

Once you have settled on an offer price and submitted the offer to the sellers, they have a finite amount of time in which to respond. My board's contract defaults to 3 days to hear back but that can be modified up or down. Sellers are out of town? You can make it 5 days. Property is very active and might sell quickly? Make it one day. Anyone who works with me knows there's no reason to wait in responding...."Get to the gettin'," is my favorite line when it comes to the contract. Even though there may be differing opinions on the price; sellers have a bottom line and buyers have a top dollar- negotiate it out....you'll either get it together or you won't.....but there's no sense in dilly-dallying.

After the initial inking of the contract, all negotiations will be done verbally until agreements have been made on all terms and price. At that point, the buyers will initial the adjustments and the sellers will do the same and sign the contract. Once the listing office (or whoever is holding) receives the earnest money, the deal is fully executed and the buyer has a finite time to conduct the inspection period while both sides are under attorney modification. To learn more about that- check out the next blog!