If you're looking at buying a home in the next couple months, I'm gonna show you exactly what you need to do to buy a home the right way. Too many people look at buying a house and they're filled with anxiety and frustration because they don't know exactly what they need to do next. And what so many people do is they pull up some home search app on their phone, and they sit there and scroll and scroll.
And see homes just flying off the shelf. They're seeing homes that they love, but they're missing out on because they didn't follow the right steps. To be able to take an action, you need to be ready so that when you find a home that you love, you can go ahead and write an offer and follow through with closing on that home.
I'm gonna show you all the steps that you need in this video. So this is a three month game plan. Okay? So if you're looking at buying within the next three months, this is going to be ideal for you. Now first, it's important to note that three months is a pretty average timeline for most home buyers. I would say most people that we talk to with our mortgage team. And you can go to win the house you love.com if you want to get started on a pre-approval. Most of the home buyers that we talked to are looking around that three month range.
People who are looking a little bit longer or tend to be in the six month range, most people aren't like, Hey, I wanna buy a home and I'm gonna do it tomorrow. It's usually around three months. And so I'm gonna separate this into three different categories. First is planning, so we need to have an effective plan before we go into the rest of it. Next is allowing us as much time as possible for home shopping because we want the biggest window of opportunity to find the house that we love, okay? We don't wanna spend a bunch of time planning and then only allow ourselves a little bit of time to shop for a home.
All right? We wanna do all of our planning work up front, and then we're going to allow ourself time to close on the home. Because when you write an offer in a home, you don't just get to immediately move into it. There's going to be time that the closing process is going to take place. So we're gonna divide this up into the amount of days.
Planning is going to take about 10 days. I think that's, you can do it definitely a lot quicker, but 10 days is gonna make it feel like you're not super rushed. Home shopping we want to do for 80 days. Now you can see in here, this is our 90-day, three month plan, and we're going to allow ourselves 30 days to close on the home. All right? If you're like, I need to do this whole thing in 90 days, go ahead and just shorten home shopping down to 50 days. Basically, the longer your home shopping window is, the higher the chance is that you'll find a house that meets the criteria that you want. What's on your needs list, what's on your once list, and we'll talk about that upcoming. So what I mainly want to happen for you is for you to be able to avoid the doom scrolling. The goal is to avoid, you know, what I'm gonna call, like Zillow doom scrolling.
And it's basically you know, I have this friend who's looking at buying a house and him wanting to buy a house for him means sitting, literally sitting on Zillow and he'll scroll and scroll and he's like, oh man, every time I see a house that I like, It goes under contract before I can do anything about it. Like, yeah, because you're not prepared to be able to actually buy a house. You're not pre-approved, you're not talking with a realtor. You don't know exactly what your budget is.
All you're doing is seeing homes and wondering why you're not able to purchase one, and that's what I want you to avoid. Is just sitting idly on Zillow and allowing all this frustration and anxiety to build up, but you're not able to move forward on buying a home. So what we wanna do is we want to kind of sprint in the beginning. We want to get all of our planning work done before we jump into home shopping. I know home shopping is fun, but just take a quick break from home shopping, from looking online, because you need to get your plan in place. Otherwise you will make bad decisions when you go through the home shopping process, okay? So I want you to plan and then be ready to act when needed. The market is not going to wait for you, okay? So we're gonna plan, and then we're going to sit and watch, and then we're gonna find a house that meets the criteria that we want, and then we're gonna take an action on it.
I'll show you how to do that. Please understand. Don't misunderstand. I'm not saying that you need to be scared and you need to buy a home right now. That's not what I'm saying. I'm saying if you want to buy in three months, the plan that you need to take in place is a plan and then be ready to act.
Okay? If this timeline doesn't work for you, if you're like, I don't wanna buy right now, that's perfectly fine. I'm not saying you have to buy right now. Okay. So we first need to start with what you can afford. Day One. What I want you to do is I want you to use your budget to find out what is and isn't working.
Okay? This is the budget planning process. So many people are gonna skip this step and it's going to hurt you in the future if you don't do this. Okay? So you can use budgeting apps if you want. You can use paper and pen, you can use Excel, you can use whatever you want. Write out what is your income, and then where do all of your expenses go? Run through your bank statements. Take an hour or two to understand where is your money coming and going. Is your budget a good lifestyle for what you want? Are there things missing? Do you need more income? Do you need less expenses? Is your current rent payment too high? Is it low? Do you have a lot of discretionary income that you're comfortable spending on a home? Your budget is gonna help you understand exactly what monthly payment for a home is gonna be comfortable for you.
A lot of people wanna use rules of thumb, like different percentages. Some people will run off of, you know, 30% of your gross income. There's all these different rules. Ultimately it's how your budget reflects your lifestyle and what's comfortable for you. Some people like being a homebody and they like having a huge house and they're fine paying most of their income for it. Other people wanna have money to be able to spend on other things other than their house, and they're fine with a small house. It's gonna depend on your lifestyle choice. Okay? Day Two is you're going to start with a preapproval. Okay? So with a pre-approval. It allows you to do a couple things. One is to verify that you can get a mortgage that you actually can get approved for a home loan. Another thing is to figure out what type of home loan works for you.
Okay? So when you talk with a lender like ourselves you'll will be able to help you figure out, is conventional better? Is FHA better? Could you take advantage of a 0% down USDA or VA loan. We can help you do that. You don't have to go to different lenders to look at different loans. Also, you can see your numbers, right? What's the maximum purchase price you can qualify it for? What's the monthly payment you're looking at, your interest rate, your closing costs, your down payment.
All of that is done by your lender. And you can schedule a call with us at WintheHouseYouLove.com to get a free pre-approval consult so we can help you run through all of this. Okay? So ideally what's gonna end up happening is from your budget, you know, maybe right now you're paying $1,200 per month in rent, and only you can determine is that on the low side for you with your budget? Is it on the high side with you, with your budget? You want to carry over a number that's comfortable into your pre-approval call with your lender and let them know, Hey, what I'm trying to stick around is $1,600 per month. Okay? If we can stick around there, I'll be comfortable in buying a home will be okay. You know, financially for me. Okay. Now then we need to decide what you actually want after we've figured out the numbers and what you can afford. Cuz this is all gonna happen within two days. All right? Now you need to move on to what do you actually want? What I want you to do is create a needs versus wants list.
Like literally pull out a sheet of paper, okay? Or if you're on the tech side, go do it in Notion or Google Sheets or Excel or whatever you wanna do. Pull out a sheet of paper. Make a line down the middle on the left. Right needs on the right, right wants, that's a hard sentence. What I want you to do is just start going through with you and whoever you're buying a house with, it's your family, it's a partner, it's a spouse, it's whomever. Start writing down what do you actually need in the house? What is a non-negotiable thing that you need? Okay, you have two kids. Okay, so you need X amount of bedrooms. What are the things that you need for your home? Then move over to what are some of your wants lists? What are some things that are ideal for you to have, and then also, what are you willing to compromise on with those? Okay. Allow yourself room to grow in the future.
Meeting 80% of your once list is okay in a home. Okay. I think that's helpful to talk through, like, Hey, we said we wanted these five things and are we comfortable with those five things? Or what if we didn't get any of them? Would we still be comfortable moving forward with that? What I think a lot of people do, and I don't know if this is like the curse of HGTV or what, but They see a home and they want it to meet their, they need to buy their dream home first. Most people do not buy their dream home first, okay? Most people take a stepping stone approach and they buy a home that fits.
It works for their situation right now, and then the next home they buy is even better and the next home they buy is even better. That's what most people do. They usually do not have the finances to purchase their dream home right up front, and that's perfectly okay. Also included in your needs versus once list is your budget. Okay? So on the needs column might be it needs to stay under $1,500 per month, or $2,500 per month, or $4,000 per month, whatever that number is for you, that can be a need. On the other side of the wants, part of the budget might be. Okay. We want it to be a fixer upper home, or we don't want it to be a fixer upper home. We don't want X amount of work to happen. Include all of those things, and this is super important as a step if you're buying with somebody else.
To prevent friction. When you go, you know, it's like the classic thing where a couple will go look at a home and one person loves it and the other person hates it, and it's so much easier If you can nail this down on paper beforehand. Day Five. What I want you to do, and you can see, you know, I gave you, this is two days to do this. Day Three, Four, Day Five is plan your exit from your current living situation. So either you are renting right now or you plan to sell, or if maybe you're actually in a spot where you're living with parents or somebody else. If so, you don't need, really need to plan that exit. For a lot of people who are renting, you need to figure out how are you gonna exit your lease it, does the timing work up where your lease is going to expire? Or do you need to figure out, you know, are you gonna make, you know, continue making payments on your rent along with a new mortgage? And if so, make sure that's something that you plan for.
Or could you talk to your landlord and negotiate a buyout? You know, maybe they're six months left on your contracts or on your lease, and maybe you can negotiate something with your landlord to pay only a couple months upfront to buy out of that lease. That is an option that can happen sometimes. Also, if you currently own a home, what is your plan to sell? You need to start talking with a real estate agent. Start looking at what do you need to do to list your home and also figure out what you're going to do with the money from the sale of your home. And if you're gonna put that onto the new one as well, most people are gonna be usually in the rental category. Okay? Then on day six is you wanna start putting your team together.
All right, so on the pre-approval side, you already started working with a loan officer and you know, I would hope that you would wanna work with our team again. WintheHouseYouLove.com to get started on a pre-approval. So you should already have a loan officer that you're working with. Right all the way back on like day two to get your pre-approval. Okay, now on day six, we wanna start finding a real estate agent and you'll have, you know, two days to be able to do this. Day six to seven. So you can find a real estate agent in tons of different ways. I do have a real estate agent referral network. You can go to win the house you love.com/. Agent. And so that is through home and money. They're one of the best real estate agent referral networks in the nation, and they can connect you with a helpful real estate agent. You can also talk with friends. Did they have a good experience with their real estate agent? You could ask for recommendation from your loan officers.
Their real estate agent that they like working with, that they know is helpful. Okay, so you want to get somebody on your team here. Now, a real estate agent is free to use for you as a buyer. And ultimately what a real estate agent is going to do is they're not just there to like, like they're not gonna magically show you houses that someone else isn't seeing the main benefit of working with a real estate agent is they can understand your contract and help protect you in your contract. Ultimately, the real estate agent is there to help you navigate some of the legal issues that can come with real estate and make sure that you're protected. When your contract is written with a seller, they're your representative in that transaction. Then on Day Eight, you're gonna look at getting a home inspector on board.
Okay. A lot of people do this once they're under contract. But you wanna go ahead and take time to research. What are some good home inspectors? You can get a, you know, recommendation from your real estate agent, a loan officer. Maybe you're looking online. Recommendations from friends, getting a good home inspector on board to use when you're under contract and you purchase a home. Okay, now, Day 11 plus, you can see we did all of our planning within 10 days. We went through what our budget was, what we actually want you know, our needs versus our wants list. We went through creating our team. You have all of the planning done within 10 days.
Now what you get to do is kind of sit back a little bit more and just start. Shopping for homes, finding what works and what doesn't work for you with the house that you're looking for. So what I want you to first do is to talk with your agent about your situation. So a lot of times people just jump straight into home shopping and, but a really good real estate agent is gonna sit you down and help you with this. And if they don't, that's okay. It doesn't mean they're bad, but you might have to lead that conversation of saying, Hey, here's our budget. Here's the location that we're looking at. Here's our needs versus wants list. Here's our pre-approval and can you tell me how realistic is this? In these different neighborhoods, what kind of feedback do they have on the plan that you've created in your local market is really gonna be a valuable conversation.
And this can be a conversation that maybe happens over zoom. Maybe you meet for coffee, you know, whatever needs to happen here. Sit down and ask your realtor, how realistic is this? Is there anything about our plan that. You know, you have concerns about, or there's strong things about our plan they're gonna be a representative. You want to get their advice about what's happening in your situation. Next, you're gonna supercharge your search with MLS access. You can only do this with a real estate agent, okay? It's the MLS, the Multiple Listing Service. And what this does is it's basically like Zillow on steroids that only real estate agents have access to. Okay? So all of the third party search sites, Redfin, realtor.com, Zillow, anything else, Trulia, that I missed? Those are going to get. Information about houses that are available, but they're usually going to be slightly delayed compared to the MLS.
The MLS is where realtors put in new homes that they're listing, and so you're going to get quicker information, more detailed infor information from the MLS. So you'll just ask your real estate agent, Hey, can you sign me up for mls updates. Based on all the criteria that we talked about, right? You talked to their agent about your needs and your wants and your budget and your location.
And so they can now plug those in as filters into the MLS so you can get updates for them. And most real estate agents will usually have some sort of app or some portal that you can log into. So it's not just like push notifications. Then what I want you to do is realistically look at homes online and keep in mind here, I said the word realistically. I know it's super fun to go on Zillow and or wherever else, whatever search site and to go find these like super cool homes and they're really exciting. But at this moment in time, it's a waste of your energy. It's a lot of emotional energy. It's a lot of just time. I want you to actually realistically search for homes that you are going to purchase that are within your budget, within your location, within exactly what you're looking for. Okay? And so something that can be done here. Again, this can happen over Zoom.
This could be in person. I think it's really valuable to have some time with your real estate agent. Maybe it's 30 minutes, maybe it's an hour. And pull up the MLS and start looking through homes. One of the most valuable things I've seen a realtor do is they sat down in a conference room with their buyers. And again, this can be over zoom if needed. They sat down in the conference room with their buyers and they just went through looking at pictures of homes online to realistically search online before they start looking at everything else. And the real estate agent was able just from pictures to be able to help them understand, you know, could you see yourself in a home like this? Does this actually fit the, you know, what's on your needs and wants list and starting to work through looking at homes a little bit more in detail, a little bit more analytically online without having to waste time going to a bunch of different homes.
Okay? Then what I want you to do is visit at least one open house. Ask your real estate agent. Are there any open houses around that would be similar to what we're looking at. And if they're not, if they're completely outta budget, completely outta location, that's perfectly fine. If you don't have any other options, I want you to visit at least one open house. Even if you're not gonna buy it, you're allowed to go in. Even if you're not gonna buy the home, you can say, Hey, we're just looking around. we were interested in this home.
We wanna take a look at it. Just so you can get a feel. It changes things once you walk into a home and you're like, oh, okay. It's a little more grounded. It's a little more realistic. It's not just seeing pictures online. It's like, okay, great. What are some actual issues that we could or could not spot in this home? What I also want you to do this is so underrated, is walk the neighborhoods that you're looking in and start to narrow down pockets that you want to buy in. Too many people are just like, I wanna buy in this city, and this city. Okay. That's super broad. Okay. Each city has probably five to 20 different pockets of neighborhoods. All of those neighborhoods are gonna be different. You're gonna have different demographics in those neighborhoods. You're also going to have different like amenities in those neighborhoods. You're going to have different price growth or deceleration in those neighborhoods. So it's. All going to change? Do you want to be in a quieter neighborhood or do you wanna be a neighborhood with growing families or there, there's so many different things that can change and that also can change the price growth of the home you know, with the home, you know, the, your potential to be able to sell the home in the future.
And also just ultimately, what do you like, what do you enjoy about those different neighborhoods? Start just going, you can go park your car in the street and walk a route, right? I know that sounds simple. But start to get a feel of what these neighborhoods are like. Look up information about these neighborhoods online, what's happening in the community locally. So you can see is this a place that I actually want to live in and understand a little bit more about. Then when you're ready, you can see that this doesn't have a day to it, it's just from day 11 on. When you're ready, you want to make an offer, okay? This is called being under contract. So the way that this works is likely you found a house and you're like, that is the one.
This is the one that we want. So you'll talk with your real estate agent and say, great. We wanna make an offer on this home now. Some people will write an offer and maybe they just saw it online and they wanted to put in an offer as quickly as possible. Okay? That's an option. Another option is maybe you said to your realtor Hey, we want to go see this home in person.
So they'll schedule a showing for you to be able to go find, to be able to go look at the house in person, both options, perfectly fine. Then you wanna tell your realtor, Hey, we wanna make an offer on this home, and you're gonna work with your realtor to figure out exactly what you're going to offer. So are you gonna offer for what the, you know, the seller is asking for? Are you gonna go under, are you gonna go over, there's so many different terms of your contract, like how long the contract is, the contract price you know, what title company is being used, what your inspection period is, what kind of appraisal contingency do you have? There's all these different things that your real estate agent can help you negotiate. Ideally, what's gonna happen is the seller's gonna come back and accept your offer. And then you're officially under contract. It's very possible that you'll submit an offer to the seller and they counter your offer and say, actually, we know you.
You know, maybe the home was listed for 300,000. You offered 290, and the seller comes back and says, you know, we'll do the deal for 295, and then you get to accept or reject that counter offer. So once you, both you and the seller agree on an offer, you are officially under contract. Then is when the under contract period starts and you begin the closing process. That last little bit of the timeline there. So closing on your home. Just a few steps here. All of these are gonna be taken care of mostly by your lender and your real estate agent. So number one, the seller accepts your offer.
Okay? Then your lender is likely going to ask you for some updated documents along with sending you your initial documents. So your initial documents are going to be your loan estimate and a lot of disclosures that you're going to get a bunch of different legal paperwork that you're gonna have to sign about your loan. They usually are gonna ask for some updated documents. You know, at the pre-approval stage you may have submitted your pay stubs and W2s. They may now need an updated pay stub or an updated bank statement. That's perfectly normal. And okay. Then you're gonna have a home inspection, right? We talk about getting a home inspector. You wanna make sure that the home is in the condition that works for you is there gonna need like 20 grand of repairs when you move into this home or 20 bucks worth of something else like you need to know, what kind of risk do you take with the physical condition of the home? Then what's gonna happen is there's gonna be a title search.
So a title company is going to look through the records of the home and make sure that when you buy the home that no one else has ownership claim to it. Then what will happen is you'll get a conditional approval from your lender. So your lender will have sent documents into the underwriter. The underwriter will come back and say, Hey, great, everything looks good. We just still need the title work, the appraisal, maybe homeowner's insurance, and maybe a, you know, a couple other documents just to clear up is very common. Then you'll have a home appraisal. So the lender is going to need to have an appraiser usually come out to the home and verify the value of the house.
Then you'll get a chance to review the final numbers in what's called a closing disclosure. So you get to see your final, you know, what's the. A final interest rate, final cost, final payment, all of those numbers that are solidified and concrete then you'll be able to sign your final documents at closing. So sometimes this happens electronically. Sometimes it's separate from the seller. Sometimes, you know, maybe. Everyone's sitting down at a closing table and you're all signing final paperwork. That's very possible. And then number nine is to move into the home. Okay? So you now have a full timeline, a full 90-day timeline to be able to purchase and to do it right. We did all of our planning up front. Get it out of the way. That way we have as much time to shop as we need to. Okay? We would love to be able to work with you. We work in all 50 states. We have mortgage advisors who would be happy to help. You can go to WintheHouseYouLove.com for a free pre-approval.
Now, if you wanna know one of the best loans to be able to purchase a house with the one of the most attractive ones to be able to purchase a house with you'll wanna watch this video on conventional loan requirements right here.
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