Today we want to talk about the process of new house choosing. What are the important things? Should your decission  be emotional or totally logic? What kind of questions you have to ask yourself? Let’s start to think.

1. Money 

First question you need to think is money. You should understand

• How much money do you have?
• Will you take mortgage or not? Where you will take money? How much additional fees you need pay for these money?
• How much percent you are ready to pay downpayment?
• Will you have money for additional expenses (lower, home checker, wash/dry/refrigerator buying ..)
• How much money you are ready to spend each month (including maintains, taxes, HOA, and other expenses related your house).
• What you will do if something will be happen (loosing the job, illness, something else… ).
• How much money you will be ready to spend for renovation?
• If you have a house and plan to sell it: When you will sell the house (before buying the new house or after)? How much money you plan to get after selling (and after agent commissions you will pay – min/max)? How long time you are ready to wait? Are your plans real? What you will do if your house will not be sell?

Nobody wants to ask yourself these questions, but it’s very important to be honest and find answer for all these questions. At the end you will be ready for any worst-case scenarios and as a result you may be happy house owner.

2. Location

If you will do your homework well you will be ready to start house searching process. Next step is understanding the location of your new house. What is the the most important thing in the house buying?

1. Location
2. Location
3. Location.

Why?

Good Location = good neighbors and good neighborhood.

Good Location = your safety.

Good Location = good (or worst 🙁 if not good location ) schools.

Good Location = speed of your house selling process if you will need.

Good Location = good value.

Good Location = time to driving to your work (and other expenses).

Good Location  = Happy life.

3. House choosing

After your location understanding – try to understand what kind of house you may buy for your money. Be careful. A lot of house poor people are happy to change their great house for less monthly payment.

Try to understand what type of home is really to buy in you favorite location. Only now is good time to hear your emotional. You need to see your feeling about house. Will you be happy to buy this particular house?

If you will pay all you life for this house – will you and your family be happy? What kind of house do you prefer?

You need to understand parameters of your house:

• Landing : big / small lot. What you will prefer do outside of your house?
• Type of landing: trees, pool, …
• House brand new/young/old

Really you have all these options. And what does it mean? Money. Money again.

It’s not possible to give you common solution which will work in any scenarios. Different states / different cities = different win scenarios. If in Dallas you may buy brand new house for ~$200k+, but in California you don’t have this option. May be the best strategy in California is buying old house as cheap as you can in the good place and remodel it.

Some important things you need to think:

• The value of good land will increase, but it’s not the same for house: if house will older the price will decrease.
• You house may not be your investment. People expect that price of houses will increase, but it’s not true for some areas. For example, good house from amazing place in the north suburbs of Chicago (Deerfield).
• If you want to totally remodel house – you need to buy a choppiest house as you can, you don’t need pay more for kitchen or bath remodel if you will totally update it.
• if you are ok to remodel your house you need to understand the list of tasks you need to do and budget for each task. You need to think about money (see questions we ask you before)  Is it possible to sell your remodel house for buying price+remodel budget+agent fees? Where you will get your remodel budget? When you will do all remodel work? what is your plan?
• Don’t buy the most expensive house in the neighborhood. It’s better to buy cheap house in the more expensive houses area.

We are ready to help you to answer any questions. We share information about our projects cost and we share information about cost of the remodel tasks. Be free to ask us and please take a look at the website.