Meet with trusted Mortgage Lender to secure home pre-approval
Without a pre-approval letter, it is useless to look at homes. It may sound harsh, but I just want to be real. If we go looking at homes on Friday evening, you fall in love with a home, write an offer and send it in…. you may be in trouble. Most mortgage lenders will not run to the office at 9pm on Friday to write a pre-approval letter for someone they haven’t met with. If the home you want is in a multiple offer situation (meaning more than one buyer is has made offers and wants to purchase), you are not going to get far. Any listing agent won’t give your offer much weight with their sellers if you are not pre-approved. Even if you know you can afford it, and will have no problem getting a mortgage, go get pre-approved before looking at homes. It is essential to you being able to have a good positive home buying experience. When you are behind the proverbial 8 ball and trying to catch up with the process, it will become more stressful. A good mortgage lender will discuss your financial picture and help determine what programs or loan will be best for your individual situation.
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Meet with a Realtor
In order for a Realtor to determine what sort of homes to show you, you must have a good idea of what it is you want in a home. Which areas do you want to live in? If you answer Minneapolis, great, but which are of Minneapolis? If you say southern suburbs, there are large differences between Bloomington, Lakeville and Lonsdale. The first part of your search criteria must be clearly defined. Neighborhood! Take into consideration your commute to work, the school district, and other important places like distance to parks, shopping, medical care…. Or any other places that are an important part of your daily lives. Once you have the neighborhood picked out, determine the style of home you want. Do you want a condo, townhome or single family home? Do you prefer slit entries over two stories? Do you want acreage or just an average city lot? How many bedrooms do you need? Is the number of garage spaces available? Sometimes it is easier to write down a list of what your ideal home would be, then pick the most important pieces and set them as the criteria. Price is important! What is your “comfort” range. I don’t care how much more you can get preapproved for, I want to know what is comfortable for you in a monthly payment. Don’t forget those pesky taxes, insurance and utilities.
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Join us this Sunday, May 3rd at Brunswick Lanes XL in Lakeville, MN for a night of fun and fundraising! A Race Worth Winning – ALS is hosting “A Strike Against ALS” from 5-7pm. You get 2 hours of unlimited bowling and proceeds from the entry fees goes to A Race Worth Winning – ALS to help Minnesotans with Lou Gehrig’s disease. The cost to participate for adults is $25.00, and only $15 for those under 18 years. Your entry cost includes lane fees, shoes and $5 in game tokens for the arcade at Brunswick! Go to www.aRaceWorthWinning.org for registration forms. Be there at 4:45 so you can get all set and still get your 2 hours of bowling in. We look forward to seeing you there!
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A counter offer is what happens when the terms presented in a purchase agreement of a home are not acceptable to a party involved. Home buyers or home sellers can initiate a counter offer in the negotiation stages of a home sale. Since it is traditionally the buyers that write an offer to purchase to be presented to the sellers, the sellers are usually the first to make a counter offer back to the buyers. When a seller receives a purchase agreement or offer to purchase their home, the seller has 3 choices. The sellers can reject the offer to purchase, accept the offer as is, or counter offer. The counter offer changes or adjusts certain terms of the purchase agreement offer. It can include the sales price, the closing date, the amount of earnest money, the personal property that the buyers want included in the sale, or any other points within the purchase agreement offer.
When the buyer receives a counter offer from the sellers, they then have the same 3 choices. The buyers can accept the counter offer with the new terms of the purchase agreement, reject it and terminate any further negotiations, or counter offer back to the sellers.
The counter offer is a tool used to further negotiations in the hopes of the two sides coming to an agreement acceptible to both parties. Counter offers should be in writing and accompany the final purchase agreement throughout the sales process. Counter offers are a very common part of the process and more transactions than not have counter offers that have been negotiated to come to the final sales agreement.
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