My fiancee and I have just starting looking into buying our first house. We are fortunate enough to have his parents willing to help us as they are fairly experienced with the home buying routine.
But my question for you is- What did you learn along the way (or afterward) that you wish you knew at the beginning? Whether it have to do with morgage, different programs, what to look for within the structure of the home… or simply style of the home. Share it all!
Thanks for your help!!! 
the big one is that I wish I hadn’t used a realtor to buy my house. I don’t see any value for all that money in retrospect.
Well first off you’ll be much better off if you have at least 20% down or can afford a line (2nd loan) to get 20% down. This will eliminate your need to pay personal mortgage insurance which can range from $50-150 per month.
Don’t buy more then you can afford, our goal was no more then 2 weeks of my salary being spent on the mortgage. This way if you were to loose your job you’d be ok with one person working. Also this allows you to save some money and still be able to go on vacation, have a nice car and or kids.
Location location location. If you plan on having a stable value get a house in a good school district. If doesn’t matter if you have kids or not, home values are higher/more stable where there is a good school district. Stay away from main roads, industrial backing or anything that causes noise. That will hurt resale if you ever have to move.
Look for 2x6 walls or anything over built. This is a huge plus! Look for new roof, heaters, A/C, windows upgrades etc. This is all stuff you won’t have to spend money on.
Watch the tax rates. You might be able to save $x,xxx moving into another county or town. We were looking at houses and the tax rate in Harris county (Houston City) were $5K more then living north of the city! That is $500 per month!!!
Your neighbors.
I’m lucky enough to live where I know 90% of the people on my road and the 10% that complain the cops ignore.
I know people that have moved into a house only to have a-hole neighbors.
Most of this is common sense. I can not come up with one thing that I didn’t have a handle on before I moved in. I went far enough to bring a ladder and a flashlight to a showing just to see things that most would have assumed to be fine.
Learned lots, my first house was a complete mistake to buy…
There’s a ton more, but that’s the main stuff.
In the process now:
<EDIT>
Here is a budget sheet I got from one of the First Time Home Buyers classes. All I did was digitize it, and add some charts to visualize your expenses. Everything totals automatically so you just have to put in the numbers.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AnnN26BRKP4qdHAzUTVuVzVBZ2Y5dW92QlJMcnJ1OFE
If its your first house figure out how long you plan on living there…
Also if your planning on fixing up a lot don’t price it out of your neighborhood lol
Realtors only cost the sellers money… not the buyers. I doubt sellers really know that they’re paying for the buyers realtor… I also doubt people will knock off 3% if you don’t use one. I agree though… Not worth it if you had to pay for it out of pocket.
I ended up gutting my house anyway so I wasn’t really too concerned about the whole house. I just wanted to make sure the location was nice. The only thing I WISH I had done… Was to pay more attention to the traffic on the street. I always went there on weekdays, so I never had any idea how much traffic goes by on weekends. It’s pretty much dead at night time (maybe a couple cars an hour). But during the day on weekends it’s a hell of a lot of cars and since it’s in the country people feel the need to do 90+ down here and practice doing pulls down the side roads at 1am. My town also doesn’t have a Police department, we have to wait for NYS troopers to get out here.
It’s not noisy inside or anything, but if you’re working outside it’s a pain. Plus people are absolute douchebags and throw shit out their windows. I have to walk across the front part of my lawn (road part) to check to make sure there’s no lighters or anything that people throw out there windows. You ever run over a lighter with a riding mower? Yeah, it’s great.
I’m about 3 seconds in to Genessee county, so my taxes are $800/yr… versus a lot more in erie.
Make sure you buy what you can honestly afford. Like ultra said, make sure if one person loses their job the other one can still pay for it.
that’s BS. sellers don’t pay to sell their house, you pay to buy it. 3% less is 3% saved.
Huh?!?!?!?
The fee to my realtors that sold my house was 3% (because it was part of a relocation); most are 6% of sale price.
Most buyers realtors split the 6% standard fee with the sellers realtor (Both get 3% of sale price).
Take a home buyer’s course if you can find one, they’re even available online. I learned a lot.
Yeah this is big. My neighbor was in The Buffalo News yesterday… again… for the twentieth time. lol
Most of my neighbors seem a little weird in some way or another but I am sure they say that about me too. lol
what I’m saying is that when a house is sold the buyer provides money, the seller provides house. It’s that simple. All fees are paid by the buyer so if you remove fees then you’re paying less.
Not completely true…
Buyer provides the $$, and pays the fees; other than the realtor fees. These are deducted from the $$ received by the seller for the house.
The only way you’re paying less without a realtor is because the seller can reduce his asking price because he doesn’t loose the 5%-6% of the sale price to the realtor.
+1, Taking part II of mine on wednesday. Even if you aren’t doing any of the programs the classes are well worth it. They range from $0 to 70+ for the 8hr ones.
As far as I know ws-6 is right. When we purchased our house we had a agent. Our agent split the 5% with the seller, but if we didn’t have an agent the seller wouldn’t have paid any less. Our agent actually gave us money back from her side to meet the sale price we offered. Its not always bad 
no matter how you cut it the seller never writes a check, money always comes from the buyer. (unless the house is for sale for negative money)
Realtors lie
Always do a title/deed search (nothing like finding out a ladybird trust was formed prior to buying the house, lol)
Always pay for a private home inspection
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+1 on the Blue lol
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EDIT PMI sucks, if you can avoid it, do it.
Seller doesn’t physically write a check, but they are charged $$ by the realtor(s)… it’s just deducted from the $$ the seller gets from the buyer.
IE: If you buy my house for $100,000 purchase price; I won’t get $100,000 from it, I’ll get $94,000. I as the seller “paid” the realtor $6000 (assuming 6% fee) for selling my house. The buyer didn’t pay this fee one bit; I did out of my profit for the house.
The only way no realtor saves the buyer ANY $$ is because sometimes the seller will/can lower their price to offset the $$ the seller would have to pay the realtor. But for a buyer, there’s no reason NOT to use a realtor. And for a seller, it’s about finding the right one. I went through 5 or 6 before I found one I was comfortable with that I felt was competent enough to sell my house in the horrid market. They sold it in ~4 months which is awesome considering the market last year.