A Real Estate Consultant facilitates your home search, while you initiate looking into the housing market. Ascertaining the characteristics of your ideal or dream house and your financial capacity you can afford are the foremost steps. The entire cost of deal is the sum total of the principle, interest payment, taxes, insurance and maintenance. Nearly all individuals are conscious of the first four P.I.T.I. or Principle, Interest, Taxes and Insurance. There is another cost of home ownership that is often ignored - property maintenance.

Maintenance is usually about 5% of the worth of the improvements / year, if the usual is taken over a long period of time, such as forty years. Many people think that 5% is too high a figure and prefer to use 2-3% instead. Whichever you use, ensure that you figure in the cost of maintenance or you will end up not easily able to afford the upkeep on your property. This is very important to realize whether you are buying a new home or an older one. And, the older home will usually have a lot of overdue maintenance.

Home maintenance includes painting, caulking, re-carpeting, floor sanding refinishing, re-roofing every 15 to 50 years, depending on the composition of the roof and even replacing of windows, trim and siding. Outside there are sidewalks, the driveway, out buildings, decks, mulching, shrubbery maintenance, fertilizing, reseeding and replanting and of course the regular cutting and similar lawn care expenses. The reason we bring all this up about maintenance is that we hope you figure in the cost of it in addition to your home cost. If maintenance is not figured in you will end up with a mortgage plus maintenance cost or have to borrow more money to do the work that is needed, and that makes it more difficult to afford your new home. It is important to figure in all the appropriate costs, expenses and other pertinent things, and to get a mortgage that you are able and willing to afford. It is important to your Realtor too. Some Realtors, in order to conserve their time and have more available for serious buyers, require that a person or couple be pre-qualified for the price range in which they seek to purchase a property first, before they begin to show properties. This is a good idea for the buyer as well as the Realtor and some sellers even ask us to NOT bring any prospective purchasers, unless they are financially prequalified — in writing!

Mortgage brokers will gladly pull your credit report and get you a letter of pre-qualification or even a loan commitment letter for the amount you need to purchase a home. If you have a written loan commitment in hand when you first contact a Realtor, you will get considerably more and better attention. One of the most difficult situations for a Realtor is that some percentage of the prospective purchasers that come to see properties for sale are not able to purchase those properties. Roughly 95% of a Realtor’s time is preparation, paper work, promotion, marketing, web site modification and maintenance as well as maintaining contact with our most qualified buyers and sellers. When we spend two or three hours with a prospective purchaser, and it’s usually far more, we are taking away from all the other things we are responsible to do for our other buyers and for our sellers. That time has to be made up. For properties under $200,000 perhaps half of the folks that come to see us for a home are not able to buy the one they want to see. For properties under $100,000 about 75% of the folks who ask us to see properties are not able to purchase those properties. And, for those folks who come into our offices or call us regarding properties under $100,000 the percentage who can’t purchase what they want is greater and greater as the price goes down. Interestingly enough, a fairly high percentage of those who seek a property over a million dollars are qualified to purchase those properties without the help of our mortgage broker. Either they have their own banker, or they are able to obtain the funds on their own from other investments, or perhaps they even have a liquid assets account such as a money market account. If you wish to be a shining light, and of greatest interest to your chosen Realtor, you are well advised to seek a mortgage broker or mortgage banker first and get a response in writing to bring with you. Your mortgage banker will probably ask for copies of prior years’ tax returns. If you have copies of your credit reports, tax returns, lists of assets and all liabilities, and your bank statements are organized, you’re ready to start exploring the housing market and shopping for a mortgage.