You've been spending a lot of time online looking at houses. You've scrolled through all the sites. You've watched countless hours of HGTV, House Hunters, and now you are ready to buy a home. What are the steps that it's going to take? I'm Kat Massetti, REALTOR® at the Haven Group | eXp Realty. We're going to go through all the steps to get you from searching for a home all the way to the closing day, where I hand you the keys and you ride off in the sunset to your new home. Everybody starts out with finding that perfect house online, and then they try to go back and get the processes in place to buy the house. In this Northern Virginia market, by the time you have found that house, and then you try to go back and get all the work done to put an offer on that house, it's going to be gone because homes in this market go like that.
So what you actually need to do is start with step number one, find a good real estate agent. What does a good real estate agent look like? Me! Seriously, a good real agent is somebody who does this full time. I am full-time real estate agent. I eat sleep, breathe real estate, and you really need somebody like that because this market moves very quickly. You need somebody who's extremely experienced and who knows how to navigate this competitive market. I have been selling homes since 2017. In that time I have sold over 150 homes now and helped over 150 families through the same process that I'm going to take you through. And that's not to say that I'm great or that I'm so amazing. That's to say that is the level of experience that I would bring as an agent to you. So you have found your perfect agent!
Now, number two, almost equally as important is the lender without money, you're not going anywhere. You don't go shopping without a wallet, right? Every buyer goes through this: They tell me, Hey, I have a job. I'm good to go. I have money. I can do the pre-approval later. That's going to aggravate you because once you find that house and you try to go back and get a pre-approval, it's going to be too late. So I will, recommend a couple local lenders that I have worked with in the past with great experience, so that you can get prepared. Now once you talk to the lender, they are the wallet. They know the money and they will give you the pre-approval as well as the budget. It's hard to think in terms of hundreds of thousands of dollars and what does that really equate to in the monthly mortgage? What they do is they reverse engineer based: on what you want to spend per month, what’s your investment that you have to put towards a purchase and they'll work backwards and give you a sales price. So now you know how much money you want to spend and you know how much it's going to cost you per month. We have a good sales price to start the search and we can now be much more prepared with the pre-approval in hand to know what areas you want to look.
That's where my expertise comes in as well. What I will do is look at your budget, look at what your criteria are and help you find that perfect house. Every buyer goes through a balance of three things. One is price, second is location, and the third is finishes. Between those three things, I help you figure out where is going to be the best spot for you, but also giving my extensive network of agents that I've worked with before, I can reach out to them and proactively find you the house.
I am the professional 24-7 house hunter! You’re working right to pay for the house. I also do the home search for you. Once you find the house that you're interested in submitting the offer, I also will come in with my expertise and give you the options as far as what I think the competitive offer is going to look like. I do a lot of leg work ahead of time.Once you identify that house that you are interested in, I call the listing agent and I get an idea of what the seller is looking for. That way we can make our offer match what the sellers are looking for and have a better chance of success in winning that contract.
Most likely in Northern Virginia, if you are looking at a house, so are 10 to 15 other buyers. We need to make sure that the offer that we submit for you is going to stand out. Hopefully once we submit that offer to the listing agent and they present it to seller, the seller picks you as the buyer to win the contract. When you see under contract, pending contract, ratified contract, or I like to say “katified” contract then that means that the seller and the buyer have agreed to move forward. At that point, hopefully the sellers picked you as the buyer and we can move forward through the process. After we go under contract, I will help you schedule inspections. I will also work with the lender to make sure that the financing is going through all the way until settlement. You're never going to be alone through this process. I will always be there to hold your hand through it and guide you through it. I make sure we can get to the settlement table on time.
The lender will also send an appraiser to value the property and complete the financing. During this time, just make sure that you're not buying anything on credit. You want to make sure that you don't change anything about your financial picture. That's a big one. Don't go to the dealership and buy a new car because that's going to tank your loan. So in this time just make sure you are keeping everything together financially and we will then get to a clear to close, which is what everybody likes. That means that the lender has done their job, that the title company has checked the seller out and we are able to meet at the closing table and get you the keys to your brand new home.
I will guide you all the way through! I’m Kat Massetti with The Haven Group | eXp Realty. I look forward to helping you find your new home. If you're ready to make that next move, give us a call! We are here to help you!