How to buy your Reno or Sparks Home

Congrats on the very first step of finding your new home, with Reno real estate agent. Now comes the fun part, finding and purchasing your new home. Below are steps that any home buyer should review prior to starting their home search.

Step 1: Go shopping for a mortgage. It may seem backwards to shop for a mortgage before you shop for the house, but there are several reasons for doing this. First, you’ll find our how much you can borrow, which has a lot to do with how much house you can buy. Be careful not to let the lender you push you into a monthly payment you don’t feel comfortable with. There are no “rules” here – only you know how much you can comfortably handle.

Step 2: Let’s go find your new home! You will be setup on an automated email system that will notify you of homes in the area you are interested in. We can modify the search by area, price, bedrooms, school zoning, etc… When we find homes of interest we will go take a look at them and see if you would like to make an offer. There is nothing wrong with making an offer on the first home you see thanks to online viewings.

Step 3: Write up the offer. After we find a home or homes that you are interested in we will write up an offer to purchase the property. This is a very simple process that will take less than an hour to complete. We will also need to submit a copy of your prequalification letter, and a check made out to the Title Company for your Earnest Money Deposit (EMD). EMD is a check that will be used to open escrow on the home provided that your offer is accepted.

Step 4: Wait for a reply. In today’s market especially in Reno, most offers are being sent in over asking!

Step 5: Once your offer is accepted (congratulations, by the way), you may be asked to put down your EMD until the contract is signed. This amount will be credited to your closing costs.

Step 6: Complete the contingencies of the contract including inspections, CC&R research if applicable, and review title reports with an escrow officer and your realtor.

Step 7: Submit your mortgage application, along with an application fee. If possible, get the lenders to “lock” your rate until the closing date. By law, lenders are required to give you an estimate of all closing costs. All in, these can run anywhere from $1,000 to $10,000. Review all the fees before you sign the loan contract. Some common closing costs include: title insurance (in case the title proves faulty), appraisal fee (for the lender’s benefit, not yours – to make sure you’re not overpaying with their money), home inspection, partial property taxes (if you close in the middle of a month), courier fees, mortgage “points” (a percentage of the loan amount), government recording fee, transfer taxes.

Step 8: Show up at the closing and sign the papers. Don’t forget to bring lots of blank checks: you’ll usually have to write separate checks for each of the closing costs. If you’d like, you can also ask to hold the bank check for the purchase price before handing it over to the seller. It’s probably the biggest check you’ll hold in your life.

Step 9: Setup utilities and move in to your new home.