Making your First Home Offer
When you have finally found the perfect home and you are ready to make an offer, hopefully at this point you have been working with a buyer’s agent and they can help you decide on the offer you want to make to the seller and their agent. At this point you and your buyer’s agent will have to fill out a Contract of Purchase and Sale form in order to submit your offer to the seller in a legal format. At this point you can expect the seller and their agent to reject your offer accept it or make a counter offer. These are the options you have and many times a counter offer is more common than a rejection unless the offer is far below the asking price.
Understanding how the negotiation process works is the key to any successful home buyer’s transaction. If the seller counter acts your offer with new terms within the contract you then have the ability to accept, reject or make your own counter offer and for some transactions this can go back and forth like this for some time until both the seller and the buyer are happy with the terms presented. On the other hand if the seller simply rejects your offer than there is not deal and that is the end of your transaction for that home. Lastly, if your offer is accepted you will still need to remove the subject clauses within the contract before the sale can be finalized.
Once your deal is accepted there are a number of steps that follow in order to make sure your deal goes through legally. First, you will have to pay the deposit which was agreed upon in the contract and this is usually kept in Escrow and used as part of the down payment. You will then be advised by your buyer’s agent to have the house fully inspected before the deal is finalized in case there are any problems with the house’s structure you were not aware of. Finalizing your mortgage at this time is a must as it does take some time and you want to be sure you are approved and ready to go before spending a lump sum on the down payment for the home.
Purchasing home owner’s insurance should be done right away in the event your home is broken into or otherwise during the process of the finalized transaction. Lastly, you will want to hire a lawyer/notary to help you with the contract, register the house in your name and provide you with the keys when the deal is completed. Land titles and deeds are very important for home buyers and this step cannot be overlooked as you will find the legality of your home owner’s deal may not be legitimate if this step is skipped.
As you can see it can be quite complicated but once you understand the process you can be sure that your house is yours 100% once the deal is completed.
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