In Part 1 of the Home Buyer Guide, I stressed the importance of shopping your financing options and getting approved for a loan.  Once buyers are qualified they are usually excited to go shopping but they need to make sure they are ready to buy before they waste any time looking around.

In Part 2, we explored when it would be a good time to go shopping for your first home.

In Part 3, we chatted a bit on how you should go about interviewing and hiring your  Buyer’s Agent.

In Part 4, realistic time frames for purchasing a home in a distressed environment were set.

In this post we will talk about how important it is to learn about the types of sales, what you should wear while shopping for a home and if you have government-backed financing (like VA or FHA) what you need to look for so your transaction does not go sideways.

Before you even walk into a home you should decide what type of transactions that you want to be involved with.  The two most common transactions in the Las Vegas area are:  REO (Bank Owned) & Short Sales.  Even our “standard” sales are not necessarily “standard” but they may be “trustee sale flips“.   REO is more popular with buyers than Short Sales.  Short sales are very complicated transactions where the sellers are trying to get the banks to forgive their debt so they can sell their home.  Many issues can happen – price can be declined, the seller can refuse to sign off on terms and conditions set forth by the bank(s), etc.  Basically, you can be waiting for months (or over a year) and a short sale is never a certain or “sure thing”.

Once you decide what type of home you would like to purchase, you will get set up on something called an “automated email drip” directly from the MLS.  You can decide on the frequency of receiving the listings that match your criteria – from ASAP to daily or weekly.  Once a new listing goes in the MLS that matches what you would like (area, home size, home type, bedrooms, etc) you will receive the listing in your email to view online.  I also provide 4 other searching options which you, the Home Buyer, can control.

Once you have found some homes to look for, we will set an appointment to go view those homes.

When shopping for distressed property, be prepared both emotionally and physically (what to wear) to occasionally run into disturbing sights, smells and even sounds.

Multiple offers on homes for sale happen in this market so when you are “ready” several things must happen:

• You can’t fall in love with just one house (you don’t want to overbid in a multiple offer situation)
• You must set appointments weekly and aggressively so you can get in and view every potential new listing that comes on the market.

One difficult aspect of this market is an occupied or tenant occupied home.  We have to set our appointment days in advance usually to see one of these.  Sometimes tenants can make it very difficult to see a home (and sometimes even the owner occupants) and we need to work our home viewing route around THEIR time and not ours.  Sometimes this will disqualify a home if someone is being unreasonable about home viewings.

Another part of the “house hunt” with a financed buyer is to also anticipate flaws in the home that may make your transaction more difficult.  Many financing institutions and loan programs have the appraiser look at the home to make sure it is “habitable”.  They do not want to lend on something that is not “habitable”.  The rules of a home being habitable are subjective and subject to the appraiser and loan underwriter’s decisions.  This must be kept in mind whenever you are on the prowl for property as a financed buyer.

So when you find that perfect home, the next thing you will want to do is write an offer.  That will be covered in the next part of this series!