Just curious if anyone here has any thoughts/opinions/expertise. I'm strongly considering entering the home buying market. I start a new job in a little over a week, and ideally, I'd move somewhere around that area. Obviously, before I commit to buying anything, I want to make sure I like the new job first. If I had to guess, I'd feel comfortable somewhere in the 3-6 month mark.
So with that, when would you start looking? I still need to go through the whole pre-approval process and everything, so I don't anticipate it would be anything super quick, but if I wanted to buy by the end of the year or early 2020... any suggestions?
buying a house, if you have the savings and the credit, is not as hard as people make it out to be. dont even bother until you have quite a bit put away, i didnt even bother getting pre approved until i had 8k in the bank(thats a shit ton for me) and i used every bit of it and then some. but other than making sure you can afford it, its easy. We began looking in january, and we were moved in february 28th.
the pre approval usually comes in within 48 hours, that will give you an idea of just how much you need stashed away for down payment and closing costs. then they evaluate every last little shit in your finances, debt to income ratio is the biggest one, any unneeded debts that you can eliminate will help a whole lot, but if they approve you for something youre comfortable with then fuck it, pay your debts as you can.
the pain in the ass with the whole process is needing to constantly provide documents. theyre gonna ask you for something every other day. i had to send them TWICE 30 day bank statements, 30 days of pay stubs, and even had to send W2s twice, because it passed a certain date and they considered all the shit i sent to be outdated and they needed new everything, including W2s. also i filled out the application right after the new year, which honestly took like a whole hour, they ask for EVERYTHING, and about 2 weeks later my lender called and said he needed it done again to reflect the new year or some shit. so me and my wife spent about 4 hours total filling out that stupid app.
Then before closing you need to get your homeowners insurance, that took about 2 hours out of my work day(which doesnt bother me because fuck my job).
all of this over a 2 month span. so yeah it was a pain in the ass and all, but overall it was pretty damn smooth and not the gut wrenching backbreaking process everyone makes it out to be.
one thing to keep in mind though, idk how it is nationwide, but here in maryland, the real estate market is TRASH in the wintertime, it doesnt take off until around april, i lucked out finding our place halfway through january, we saw it the day it hit the market and had our offer in the next day and it was accepted the day after that, but overall there was like 3 houses in our range that were livable, but the previous 2 times we looked(both in the summer) we were looking at 20+ houses a month in our range, only reason we didnt offer on any of them was because we didnt wanna live on that side of the key bridge(and because my dad committed fraud in my name and i had to burn a bunch of my savings to fix it). so if your market is anything like marylands, i would say start looking around february, give yourself plenty of time to make a smart decision and be comfortable with your funds, if you see something thats early for the market then awesome, if not then you have time to wait for new ones to show up.
also if you have any concerns about water being a problem... go with your gut. i worried our backyard would be a slopbucket, and its way worse than i couldve imagined. now i shit my pants everytime it rains because my patio gathers an inch of water in a heartbeat, and im gonna need to do some serious landscaping to fix it.
