We're looking for a place..we're not even sure where we want to move (this is we as in my mom and I, and separately my sis and bro...and somewhere where FH and I can be near....)...But it seems like sucha daunting task. Any ideas on how to get started?
Danielle&Scott
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Re: How do you begin house hunting
Marymoon....First you have to figure out what county and towns you are interested in. You also have to figure out what features of a house you are looking for...how many bedrooms, bathrooms, basement, garage, etc....Also it would be good to look at the school districts to make sure they are good for the area you are looking at....
If you need any help researching this stuff, you can FM me. Danielle and I did a lot of research when we were looking. We stopped for a while to save more money because we didnt like the houses that were in our price range and we are hoping in the future we will be able to afford something that is in better condition and has more updates done to it.
You also need to figure out how much you and your DH would be comfortable spending on your mortgage, and also if you will be able to afford other bills and still be able to live...
Start going to a few open houses....
Get a pre approval done on a mortgage, to see what you can afford. That is a big step..Danielle and I did it, it is free...but it also helps out because we knew what we could afford.
That is somewhat why we stopped looking now...
I hope this helps, Scott
Summerbride04
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Re: How do you begin house hunting
What kind of information do you need to bring when you get pre-approved for a mortgage?
Danielle&Scott
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Re: How do you begin house hunting
You basically need all your information that you brought with you to get your taxes done. You need your W2's from 2003 and 2004, two of your last pay check stubs and your Dh's last pay stubs....Your SS number and his SS number....
What I did was call the broker and then we dropped off all the papers to him since he is located a few blocks from where we live. Scott
btrflygrl
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Re: How do you begin house hunting
do they do good faith estimates in NY? Down here if you find a house you are interested in, your mortgage broker can write up an estimate of all the costs....that is what we did and then go a preapproval letter and then we got locked in at 6%
Danielle&Scott
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Re: How do you begin house hunting
I dunno.
julz33
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Re: How do you begin house hunting
Yeah, they do good faith estimates in NY. We started by going to open houses all over the areas we thought we might like. Then we narrowed down the areas based on what we saw at the open houses, and saw what types of houses we liked best, what we think we NEED in a house, etc. Once we decided on a general area we used a RE Agent because the houses in the price range we were looking at sold in only a few days... we needed to know about new listings ASAP.
TracyInQueens
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Re: How do you begin house hunting
We bought Home Buying For Dummies, which had a lot of helpful info.
We also spent a lot of time on RE sites like Realtor.com and HoulihanLawrence.com, so that we could get an idea about what we could get in our range. To me, there was no point in deciding that we wanted certain things because it would have been depressing to find out that we could not afford them.
When DH and I did find a house, we knew that we were getting a good deal for the money. We didn't see too many houses in person, but we saw many on the net.
I think you and I FMed about Putnam County a while back. DH and I bought in Brewster. Feel free to FM me if you have any questions about the area.
