What's the most important thing when buying your first home?

When considering your budget, make sure you can afford the monthly payments, as if they increased by $100 per month. This was a little piece of info our realator gave us, and it came in very handy. The second year we were in our home, the taxes and insurance went up, causing our monthly payments to increas by about $110 per month. If we had ignored our realator, we'd have been in big trouble! Another thing, when you make your offer, come in a little below the price listed, and see if the seller is willing to pay the consessions. We lucked out with this one, we didn't know anything about it, and our realator just kind of did it for us. The guy had the house up for $90,000, we offered 88,000, and asked for consessions. On closing day, the seller paid $3,000 toward our closing costs, we walked away with the key to our new home, and only had to come up with $1,700 out of pocket!

My one piece of advice..well I have two... sorry I just can't follow rules First of all make sure you can afford the house and consider how you will pay for it IF you and/or your husband loses your income because in these economical times it could happen. Next is remember that a house in not a home by it's location or the price you pay or any other material thing. Love makes a home! That's all the great wisdom I have to share! Good Luck!

There is some really good advice here. Here is mine. First off, don't listen to the mortgage company, with what they say you can afford. If you do that you won't be able to do simple things like eating. When we bought our home a little over 5 years ago, the mortgage company kept saying we could afford a $120K home. Which we knew if we wanted to eat there was no way. This is what we did. We looked at what we were paying in rent, and wanted it lower or about the same. So based on $100 per $10K we knew that what we really could afford was no more than $60K. The second piece of advice I have for you is this. Don't let your agent sell you a house, let the house sell you. Don't feel pressured to buy a home you don't love. I live in Indiana, one of the cheapest places of properties. We went through 2 other agents before we found one, that wasn't trying to get us to buy something that wasn't right for us, before we found an agent, that understood, that the house has to be right for us, and not just sell us one for the almighty dollar. The third agent we had, showed us dang near 200 homes before the one we bought came on the market. With her we looked for 10 months before we found what we were looking for. But then we came to a problem. It was listed at $69,900 and we had decided out budget was under that. So we decided to put in an offer. We put it in at $50K and went back and forth a couple of times, and settled on $54,000. We also put in the offer, that the seller pay all the closing costs. At times it felt that we would never find a home that didn't need $100K into it to make it livable, but we kept our spirits up and didn't give up. Even though when looking for a first home, it can be frustrating, not finding what you are looking for. Make a list of Must haves, and a list of things you would like to have, but can compromise on, then it will be easier to find just what your looking for. My list of must haves was hardwood floors, though the house we found, had carpet over them, we were happy to find a home that was big enough, that didn't need a whole lot of work. I just had to rip out that carpet, to have the floors that I wanted. Other things that were on my wish list, that the house didn't have was a dishwasher, and a fourth bedroom. But that is fixable, we added a dishwasher, and this year we are converting the garage (we don't use it as one anyways) into a fourth bedroom, that we really did want, but compromised on it, knowing that we could convert that attached garage into what we would eventually need. Now that my oldest is gonna be a teenager this year, its time for her to have her own space away from her little sister. I guess my whole point in this is not to settle, know what you want, and what you can do at a later time. But most importantly find an agent who is not going to pressure you into a home you really don't love, because you don't know what the future holds, it could be the home you live at for the rest of your life, and if you don't love it, you will not be happy.

My advice would be to pay attention to the details on what kind of shape the house is in. Don't just trust an inspector since they often miss things or don't check things that you thought they would. Check on plumbing, wiring, switches, etc. make sure everything works, find out what wall switchs control, just because a rug looks great because it has just been clened does not mean it is in good shape since there may be spots that don't show after being cleaned but come back in a few weeks or months. Like I said details on everything.

I've not purchased a house as of yet but I worked for in a real estate office for a while and watched a friend go through some headaches with her first home, and through those experiences, learned a few things to watch out for. Fixer-uppers are not necessarily worth the money. Especially if it is your first home. Let's say you get approved for enough money to put a down payment on a home that is listed for $150,000. But you find a fixer for $100k so you think, "Smaller down payment, smaller monthly payments, and we can use the rest of the bank loan to pay for the improvements." But as soon as you start making improvements, you find out that the pipes are rotten and need to be replaced and whoever put in the electrical system should have let a chimpanzee do it because it would have been better. So then your improvement bill climbs and you no longer have enough to pay for them... Just because there was an inspection done before the house went up for sale doesn't mean they found everything. Or they found it but it was "fine as long as it was left alone." Also, question, intently, anyone who offers you a house with no down payment. Everyone I know who has gotten this offer has found themselves in a world of trouble. They found out later that by not making a down payment it made them ineligible to refinance their mortgage. It also left them with no leeway on their payments. If they were late at all, they got insane late fees, like $100+.

when buying my first home, i think ill definatly look at how much land comes with the property and if the property and house is apraised at the right price. it's really important to get what you want when you get your first house because it's something you can't just move out of like if you were renting it. make sure it's in the location you want it and all the details are in working order. little things matter when it comes to that big of a decision.

before we buy a new home, there are many preparation to do, the first is take a research of many houses maybe at an exhibiton. there we can know and get many brochures of houses. after that we have to consider several things, which is our money and location of the house. if we dont have a lot of money, dont buy a house that to expensive, because it will be hard to us to pay it. choose the house that the location is the most perfect, maybe near from your office or your children's school.