Saturday 31 December 2011

Keep This In Mind When Buying A Home

By Christy Hoyle


It can be a daunting experience to buy a home. If this is your first time, then you are about to experience all sorts of dodgy things being done to you, by the seller, their estate agent, or even your own estate agent. But just like many things in life, it would be helpful to have even just a little knowledge. If you are buying a home, then try to consider these things.

First and foremost, you won't go wrong if you set a budget and stick to it. Work out what you can afford, and then work backwards to include agents' fees and other expenses (surveys, for example). To compute for the maximum price that you should pay for your house, take your budget and subtract the fees and expenses. Once you get into debt, it's hard to get out and this is what will happen if you go over because you'll struggle and get yourself into bad debts.

Always having a proper survey done is the next important thing to consider. It will be much more expensive for you if you buy the house only to find something that the survey would have so even if they are expensive, it can be tempting to skip it or try to do it yourself from a checklist you found in a book. It is therefore not a good idea to buy houses at house auctions because of this very reason because sometimes, they will have drastic structural defects that a survey would have found, but you've just committed to buy the house without one.

There is one more piece of advice, and that is to take your time. When you decide to move, you would be tempted to just dive in and see as many houses in a week and then try to buy one of them. However, the people who find the best houses take a year or even more and they would look at only a few good houses each week until they find one that really grabs them.

If you do it this way, not only will you be less stressed, but you'll also be much more likely to be happy with the result.




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