Welcome back for part 2 of my series "How To Buy A Home". Are you hoping to buy a home soon, or in the future? Have you tried buying a home recently with no luck? Today's real estate market is crazy, to say the least...It can be overwhelming and discouraging, especially for the first time home buyer. I'm here to you. This video series will take more of the guesswork out of the home buying process and give you the confidence you need to successfully buy a home. In this episode, I begin a series about the 10 Steps To Buying A Home In Orange County. This second part will cover steps 4 - How To Find A Real Estate Agent, 5 - Start The Home Search Process and 6 - Make An Offer. Even though I'm located in the Orange County real estate market, you can and should follow these steps everywhere. The steps to buying a home are no different, from city to city. Part 3 of this series will be released next week, so check back for more.

Ron Evans
Broker Associate
Amy Sims Real Estate Team
realestate101@ronevansrealty.com
949.929.2270
www.ronevansrealty.com


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[00:00:00] : Yeah. Hi, everybody glad to have you back today. This is going to be part two of my series on how to buy a house. And there are 10 steps. There's 10 steps to buying a home successfully, and in part one, if you go back, I covered steps 12 and three, which is Check your credit score, determine how much you can afford and choose a lender and get preapproved for a mortgage. Today I'm going to cover steps 4, 5 and six. They are. Find a real estate agent, start the home search process and make an offer. Next week. When you come back, I will cover the final four steps. So this is going to be a three part series in total as always, wherever you're listening or wherever you're viewing. When you have questions or comments, please leave them and I will get back to you on those I reply to everything that I get. If you would like to ask questions direct in private, You can email me at real estate 101 at Ron Evans Realty.com. You can also text me at area code 9499 - 9 - 270. Get down here on my notes And we're gonna dig right in step two. I'm sorry. Part two of the 10 steps to successfully buying a home step number four And the 10 steps find a real estate agent. So sometimes, you know, there are a lot of steps, obviously, to buying a home. We've covered some. We're going to cover some today, cover some next week. Even with everything we've got going on today, all the contracts, all the litigation, all the different websites and the abilities to search and everything else. We still have some buyers who like to try to do it on their own. But what I want to talk about today is how having a good, reliable real estate agent can make your life and this entire home buying process a lot simpler. So when you hire an agent, they represent you, just You Okay, um, sometimes buyers I like to call the listing agent, thinking they might get a better deal or have a better opportunity of getting there. Offer accepted. And I will tell you from my own experience that occasionally it might seem like you're getting a better deal on paper or it might seem like you're getting a better deal because your offer got accepted. But what you always have to keep in mind is that that listing agent has a fiduciary responsibility to the seller. He owes you fairness and to treat you right he's supposed to. But at the end of the day, his fiduciary responsibility is to the seller. He's not your hired representation, and sometimes agents take advantage of this. It's just the reality of how things go. Some agents I don't even want to represent both sides because they know how it can look and they know how it can be such a difficult situation to be put in the middle. But the ones that do do it, some do it effectively, and some are fine. But there are quite a few out there that you know it's It's tricky at best, so just know going in if you're the type of buyer who's maybe you saw it on tiktok are you saw someone's post about on Instagram that you should always call our contact the listing agent. Sometimes it's good, sometimes it's not, and you're really taking a roll of the dice on that. So, um, again, your real estate agent that you hire represents you throughout the entire home buying process to make sure that you have found the right home. You're asking the important questions. You're making an appropriate offer because remember the agent you hire since they represent you, they're able to objectively look at the cops, the comparable sales, and help you formulate an offer and interpret the market data. They're not helping you. If you hire the listing agent, they might be helping you write an offer that they know. Like, Is there sellers pie in the sky offer again? Not. You're not always your interest. First, they also have the power to help negotiate and receive all the necessary disclosures and help you interpret them and understand them. There's a lot of paperwork are in California where I'm at. Our residential purchase agreement alone is 11 or 12 pages now just a boilerplate purchase agreement. It does not include any of the required disclosures that auto populate in. I believe you're about 18 x 18 or 20 pages. Now when you go to submit an offer of a contract and then once you're in escrow There are still other disclosures that you, as the buyer, need to complete or at least acknowledge you have received. And there are things that the seller completes to send to you to review. And trust me when I tell you it's not always written from a friendly point of view. A lot of a lot of legal wording, very official wording in there, and it can trip some people up. And I have. I have yet to have a client, a buyer client that hasn't had questions on how to interpret a lot of these disclosures. So it's important that you have an agent that can help you with that. But the most important thing about having an agent in your corner that you've that you've hired is there going to just give you invaluable peace of mind. You know, they're your buffer. There are a lot of times when I'm working with a buyer and we're in a transaction together. We're in escrow that I'm having communication with the listing agent, asking questions on behalf of my buyer that my buyer hasn't even asked yet. Or maybe I see things going on, a timeline that looks a little out of place, or I'm wondering why we haven't done certain things. And instead of waiting for my buyer to get these questions from escrow or whoever and throwing them off and getting them nervous because it's already the most nervous time they're ever going to have in their life, it's the biggest transaction most people ever complete. Um, I worked proactively to start asking those questions and getting that information in, so that when the time is right, I let my buyer no, and it just reassures them that everything is going smoothly. So the way to find the right real estate agent is by asking the right questions. And I'm going to give you some of the best questions that you should be asking. And I'd like to know. Maybe you want to drop a comment down below and and if you have other questions that you think might be appropriate or other questions, maybe you've asked in the past or information you thought might be applicable. Let me know what you're thinking, and I'll let you know if those two might be appropriate and good questions ask. So the first one, obviously, is. How long have you been working as a real estate agent. It should be of no shock to anybody that We have, especially here in California. We have a lot of licensed agents. I think it's over 400,000 Yeah, and sometimes it seems like the barrier to entry is not very difficult to even get into our profession. Um, someone who is new may not have the vendor contacts that you need the best vendor context that you need. You may or may not know, or they may or may not have the best set of communication skills you just don't know. So it's I'm not saying not to ever work with the new agent, not saying that at all. I'm just saying it's important to know how long they've been an agent, so you can gauge what their experience level is because that's what it boils down to. Is you having expectations? Another question, you may ask, is what makes you different from other agents? What's their value? Add to you? Are they just going to tell you? Well, I'll send you a bunch of listings, and when you see something that you like, you let me know and we'll go see it together. Is that their level of involvement? Or are they saying you know what I look for? I set you up with the search, obviously, in our multiple listing service. But I review everything before I send it to you so that I know when you have a question about a specific property before we go and see it. I've done a little homework upfront. I've looked at the pictures and I understand, Um, maybe in the pictures, it may have things a little bit different than what you were looking for, but I see the potential here, and I can explain that to you. I'm not just sending you blind properties and you're reviewing them and thinking, man, why is my agent sending me these? These don't even come close to matching my criteria. Sometimes there's a reason, at least for me. You know something's close, not exact. But I can see the potential. Or I can talk to him about what other people may have done to a house to kind of change it around. So it's all about that type of relationship. Um, so what? What makes you As an agent who's going to represent me and what makes you different from these other 400,000 agents that are in our state. Very good question. To ask another one is, how many clients are you working with? There's no wrong answer here. It's just so that you can understand what their level of engagement potentially may or may not be with you If they don't Do you know, if they say I have, like one or two, you know, then you can reasonably expect they should probably have pretty good communication skills. If the person says, Oh, I've got 30 I'm working with right now and I've got five in escrow and everything else that's awesome. A follow up, a little side question might be, Well, do you have a team that's helping you with that? Because I wanted to make sure that I understand how you're going to be able to communicate with me in a timely manner, because it seems like you might be too busy for me. Conversely, go back to the person only has one or two clients, or maybe no clients that they're working with a follow up question to that would just be, you know well, are you working another job, you know? Are you Are you? Is this full time for you? Um, just understand it again. There's no wrong answer to any of these as long as you are comfortable with what the level of engagement is going to be, level of communication is going to be that there's an expectation set and met. So how long have you been working as a real estate agent? What makes you different from other agents? How many clients are you currently working with? What experience do you have finding homes in my price range. Now, why is this important? Well, let's say you, five years ago were uh, a new couple, first time home buyer. You bought what you could afford, and it's just like an entry level home or condo in my area. But now it's five years later, you got a little family going. You're having success in your career, and now you are moving up into like, the luxury space of a home. You're going from the $700,000 condo 2 $2.5 million home again. There's no wrong answer here, but if you're you know, you may have a listing agent that you've hired to sell your condo, and they may want to represent you on the buying side of your home of your new home. You just want to understand what their level of experience and finding homes at that price range is because maybe they've never sold the home at that price range or they're not familiar with those neighborhoods. And there's specific things that you should be known about those neighborhoods. Um, so it may or may not behoove you to have a separate agent for your bio side verse and yourself side. A lot of times of yeah, people will stick with Okay, this person selling my home and they're looking for a home for me, but again understand what their experience level is at finding homes in your price range. Conversely, it could be the other way around to you. Could be you could be downsizing going from the $2 million and you know, you just need like the little single level condo. One bedroom condo, two bedroom condo is the luxury agent that only mainly sells luxury homes. Are they going to be able to give you the attention you need? at a lower price point like hate to say it, but will they take it seriously enough that that could be something you might be thinking of again? There's no wrong answer in that. Just understanding the level of commitment. Next question. How knowledgeable are you about my desired area? Kind of goes with the previous one, right? Price ranges tend to go from area to area, but you might have some things in the same price point in different areas, you know? Are you, um, familiar with the schools in the area that they're looking at? Are you familiar with the shopping, the walk ability? Um, maybe any special things about an area, crime rates and whatever, Like, how knowledgeable is that person in your area? Maybe you're coming from out of town. You know nothing about the area that happens a lot, too. And Mike, especially here in Orange County, we get a lot of people that relocate from other parts of California L. A San Diego, whatever. And they're selling a home up in LA and their agents making the drive down to Orange County with them to show them homes. The agent never comes to orange County. It really doesn't know anything about Orange County. And if you're if you're the listing agent on the home they're looking to buy, they end up asking you more questions and they're asking their own agent. So again, how knowledgeable is the agent? You're You're interviewing about knowing about the desired area that you're wanting to live in? How long have you been working as a real estate agent? What makes you different from other agents? How many clients are you currently working with? What experience do you have finding homes in my price range. How knowledgeable are you about my desired area? Last question, you may ask is Are you willing to provide me with references? Just about every agent out there has a website. And just about all those websites have reviews from clients. Those are all fine and dandy. But are they willing to actually go? Hey, you can call John. I did a deal with him two years ago. He's always told me that anytime anyone wants to call and ask about you, they can't. Is your agent willing to give you references like that? Or do they just say, Oh, yeah, I've got some great reviews on my website again. No wrong answers. It's just how deep you might want to dive into that. Now, once you have your agent that you've selected, it's best for you. They should be able to look over your approval letter and discuss your budget and help you set your priorities. And once you've got all that dialed in, you've been they've done in consultation with you, and they've got all that dialed in. We move on to step number five, starting the home search process. Mhm. So once you've got your agent set up and you've done a consultation with them and they understand your budget and your approval, maybe they've talked to your lender to understand anything special that might need to be done when making an offer or the types of homes that you may or may not qualify to purchase. It's time to start house hunting. The fun begins. Now remember as you as you're looking casually looking. Excuse me. Keep your priorities in mind. Hopefully, you have a list of what your priorities are. The area that you desire the size of home, that you desire closeness to schools that need to be close to work if need be. Have all those things in a priority list of like, your must haves would like to have. And I tell people the if everything works out, here's other stuff that would be awesome to have. But you've got to have your must have list that your main priorities. And then you have to have your plan B list that goes along with that, which is the would be really awesome to have. But I can live without if I have to. Then you've got plan C Over here, you've got your C list of items, which is like, Wow, if this also checks off these boxes, that's kind of like the ticker that maybe you're weighing a couple of different properties together. You're looking at like the C list to see if anything Tips one A The Other. Just remember, it's highly unlikely that any listing you find is going to check off every single box. Okay, especially when you're looking online. So try not to be too picky online until you actually see the home in person. Sometimes it's just a lot different. You get a lot different feel when you pull up the curb appeal the neighborhood. And I see it happen all the time. People make concessions that you never thought they would make just from seeing a home in person versus just seeing it online. Now, they're obviously they're gonna be things that you see online that will be nonstarters and deal breakers for you that you won't go see the home in person. But if you're on the fence about it, go see it in person tour different house houses and areas. Okay, um, you'll find the more houses you see, the more they'll start to blend together. Make sure you're organized. As you walk through the various homes again, keep your priority list with you. If you give it to me, I'll make copies of it for you, even so that you basically go from house to house and just check off boxes. Hate notes reflect on the house itself, as well as the surrounding area. I always do a debrief with my clients after we walk out between visits. Some things to consider the size, style and condition of the home. Okay, you got to do any work to it. The neighborhood the home is in what your commute may or may not be like in the schools in the area. Remember how sometimes people look for homes that are in poor condition that need to be remodeled, need to be fixed up, and they think it looks like a steal. Just remember, you're the one that has to do all the repairs And 99% of the time you find things as you start to make repairs that you didn't see before, that even a good home inspection didn't catch because you can't open up walls and things like that in a home inspection. Um, some people, even just replacing outdated appliances, can be a pain. So just really understand the condition. You may want to maximize your budget on a home that needs less work unless you're really, truly ready to dive into updating a home. All right, you selected an agent, they have consulted with you. You searched for homes. And now hopefully you've picked home And you're ready for step six. Make an offer. This is probably the most nerve wracking portion because a lot goes into this understanding the cops, understanding the price that you need to put on your offer understanding if you've got multiple offers you're dealing with and competition you're dealing with and then playing the waiting game, So when you find a house you want to buy, it's time to begin the process of making an offer. This is when you want to ask your agent to run the cops. The comparative market analysis to determine a fair price based on recent sales of similar homes in the area. Mhm. The less interest rate is, and the longer the house has been on the market always remember typically, the more power you will have to negotiate. Now, a real world today in 2021 homes are not lasting that long. And if they are still lasting longer than they should, um, you still may or may not have a lot of leverage just based on where our market is today. Very high demand, very low supply on a lot of competition. So in a normal market, my notes are are true and steady, and today's in our immediate market. It may or may not be that way again, why having the right agent working for you is key, so beyond the price you plan to offer you should speak to your agent about whether it makes sense to include any contingencies in your offer. Now, here in California, um, our contracts have contingencies already built into them, and they are understand they are already in the contract unless you, while making an offer, removes those contingencies, Sometimes it makes sense to remove some of them or all of them most the time. It doesn't, though. Contingencies are your way as a buyer to be protected in case something goes wrong on the transaction to make sure that your deposit is protected and that you're protected to cancel if need be. And it's always the things that we don't see coming that get in the way. You should never go into a transaction or into a purchase of a home playing a game with the contingency, so to speak and should always be going into it with the intent of completing the transaction. But it's important for you and your agent to understand what contingencies you already have, and if you need to add anything or remove something from the contract when you make your offer, so what a contingency is is. It's a stipulation, including in an offer that states that have a particular condition is not met. The buyer is free to break the contract without any repercussions. Okay, the three main ones we have here in California is we have an inspection contingency. We have an appraisal contingency if there's a loan and we have a loan contingency to make sure that you were able to as the buyer to make a get a final approval right before escrow is too close. If any of those contingencies fall through, typically you can cancel a contract. Get your deposit back, move on. That's why it's important to know, Like what? You can leave in the contract, which could take out the contract, maybe make your her more attractive or, depending on what you're doing. You may take stuff out. Those sellers well, sometimes balk. It offers made with contingencies. But there are some contingencies that are worth making, regardless of the sellers feelings about them. Okay, we're going to talk about a couple is more detailed alone. Contingency. If your ability to afford the home is dependent on your ability to obtain alone, you really should keep alone contingency in your offer. This contingency will make it possible for you to back out of your offer. If for any reason, you are unable to receive financing. Even if you've been pre approved for your loan, you should still right the the loan contingency in or keep it in the in your offer. You never know when you may have a personal life event that hits you At the 11th hour and derails your home. Buying home sale contingency or sale of home contingency. Now this is applicable. This contingency is applicable. Obviously, if you're already a homeowner and you're wanting to move and purchase another home, and your purchase that you're trying to make is going to be contingent upon selling your current home. Now, a lot of these kind of go hand in hand. You may have to sell your home to complete your loan contingency to make sure that your loan goes through okay, But if you're planning to sell your home and you require front funds from the sale to purchase your new home, you're going to want to make sure that you have a home sale contingency in place. There are some instances where you don't need to, and it has to do a lot with the lender that you're working with. Type alone, that you're getting the expertise of your agent so on and so on that those are one off situations. Um, what this does as it protects you in case you are unable to find a buyer for your home while you're in escrow for your new home. Um, it allows the seller to move on, and it allows you the buyer to move on again. Pretty much clean. Um, in today's market, a lot of sellers will not accept an offer that has a home to sell contingency or not even a lot, pretty much every. So it is not going to accept an offer that has a home sell contingency. That's our reality of 2021. But eventually things will change and it will be more applicable. You may or may not need to feel feel comfortable with or without. That the inspection contingency. This is the most, in my opinion, the most important contingency for you the buyer when it comes to protecting your investment. So the inspection contingency allows you the buyer to do any and all investigations you want on the home Within a whatever the specified time is the boilerplate here in California 17 days. But you can get a lot of it done in 10 to 12 days. So usually we'll we may shorten that to make an offer. Look a little cleaner. So the seller is not just sitting around thinking that you're going to wait 17 days to get things done. So but during that time that 17 days, that 10 days, whatever it is you choose with your agent, you're going to get things like home inspections, a general home inspection. If it's a pool home, I would highly recommend getting a separate independent pool inspection if you've got some high end h back air conditioning. If you've just got like a standard air conditioning, your general home inspection should be fine, unless he finds something wrong with it. And then you can have an independent H Vac inspection done. I personally had a transaction one time that had the home had six air conditioners. So regardless of what the home inspection was going to say, we had an independent air conditioning inspection done, um, a roof inspection again. You may or may not need a roof inspection, depending upon what the General Home Inspection finds. If they find signs of leaks or signs of repairs, which are easy to spot, then you might want to have a more in depth, specific, specific roof inspection or if the homes older and it doesn't look like the roof has been replaced in a long time, have an independent one or just for your peace of mind. If you want to have an independent one, regardless of what any of the other inspectors say all up to you, you just need to know what all your options are. And just know that if there's a working mechanism or a component in this house, you can probably have an independent inspection done above and beyond the General home inspection. But during your inspection contingency, it's not just for physical inspections of the home. It's also for reviewing all of the disclosures that come over from the seller specific to the home. They have what's called the seller's property questionnaire or the seller lists out everything that they know to be true of the home that made me work, that they've done things that they know work, things that they know that are broken, um, possible death on property if it falls within the right. Guidelines, nuisances, complaints, all those types of things going like the seller property questionnaire, Then there's also the transfer disclosure statement, and that's more, um, just boilerplate. They're checking off boxes of what's included with the home that they know that home has with it and different things. But during this inspection contingency timeline, you get to review all of that. Not just do physical inspections. Another Big one is if the homes in an HOA. This is your time to review and ask questions about the CC and RS and the documents and requirements. All that happens during your inspection. Contingency timeline. Now there's some other smaller inspection contingencies outside of this one that you know, Sometimes things get enacted because things get maybe paperwork. It's delayed sending to you that's a whole other conversation. But just know in general during your inspection, contingency timeline is your chance and your requirement as the fire to review things to make sure you are comfortable buying this house as it sits. Um, the other Big one is the appraisal contingency. If you're having alone, That's a Big one. Because in our market today, when you're having to bid and offer tens of thousands of dollars, possibly over list price and actually possibly over recent sale cops what they show appraisals can be very tricky. And you need to understand, with or without an appraisal contingency What that means to you If the home you're buying doesn't appraise for the amount you need needed to for your lung to go through, are you willing to Are you willing, Mr Buyer, to come out of pocket to make up any appraisal gap? Well, you're Linda allow you to do an appraisal gap. So these are all extra things you need to know. And if you have a good agent, they should know how to explain that to you. They should also know how to, um, translate anything that the lender is talking to you about. What? That as well. Okay, so today we're coming to an end here, coming to a close. But to recap We covered steps 4, 5 and six Of the 10 steps to success on how to buy a house. Keep in mind, I know that most of my clients and everything I work with here are in Orange County or in California. But these steps are pretty much applicable anywhere in the United States. So hopefully, if you're listening from outside of Orange County, let me know outside of California. Let me know. I'd love to hear some feedback on, um, what you think of these steps and if you have found them useful for you in the past or in the current situation that we've covered. Finding a real estate agent today, which step for Start the home search process, which is step five And making an offer, which is step six next week. I'll be wrapping things up When I talk about step seven, which is get a home inspection and home appraisal. Step eight. Purchasing homeowner's insurance. Step nine. Doing a final walkthrough and stepped in closing on your new home again. I thank you for coming back. Appreciate it, and I will see you next week. If you have any comments or questions again, you can leave them in the sections on whatever podcast you're listening to or on YouTube. If you're watching the video, you can email me directly at real estate one on one at Ron Evans realty dot com or text me 9499 to 9 to 270. See you guys again next week. Hey. Uh huh. Oh.