When my husband and I were newlyweds, our family situation led us to the decision to buy a home. My mom was handicapped and needed our help, and my younger brother was a student at community college. At the time, we had little or no understanding of the home buying process; we were completely clueless. We thought you just borrowed money somewhere, gave it to someone who had a house you wanted to buy, and they gave you the house, right? Well, in mega-simplified terms, that’s exactly what happens. But, as in our case, if that’s all you know about buying a home, you could be in for a bumpy ride – and an epic DIY fail.
Big Mistakes
Mike and I made many mistakes during that first home buying experience – mistakes we never would have made if we had used a buyer’s agent to represent our interests from the start. Here are just a few.
First, we started driving around looking at neighborhoods with no idea how much we could afford. We saw a for sale sign in a neighborhood close to Mike’s office, so we called the number on the sign and spoke to the agent. She was more than happy to show us the house. It was a three-bedroom ranch with a garage apartment out back where my brother could live. We asked her about home mortgages and she sent us to her in-house lender who set us up with a high interest, no cap, negative-amortization loan that got costlier with every payment we made. Thankfully, those don’t exist anymore.
The agent never suggested we get an inspection, never sent us title documents to look at, never disclosed the crumbling plumbing or the ageing furnace, or mentioned the annual locust infestation and flooding that plagued the neighborhood every summer. Never a word about the iffy location or resale value. When it came time to sell, we barely escaped with our credit score intact and had to bring a big chunk of money to closing just to get it sold. I get a little dizzy when I think about it now. One of the reasons I became a real estate agent was a desire to help others avoid the mistakes Mike and I made. But in our DIY world, it seems that more and more folks will be making them. For more information about Buyer Agency, see our FAQs here.
Next month: Seven Great Reasons to Hire a Professional