When it comes time to buy a new home, it can be a confusing process for someone who’s never done it before, and may people may not even be sure where to start. Fortunately, the home buying process can easily be broken down into a series of easily followable steps, and here they are.

1. Get Preapproved For a Loan

Getting preapproved is an easy step to miss, especially for those who are unfamiliar with real estate. By selecting an appropriate mortgage and getting preapproved, buyers will be able to show sellers that they have already been approved to take out a loan when it comes time to put in an offer on a home. This can be an incentive for the homeowner to accept the buyer’s offer because it means not having to wait any longer for the buyer to find a lender.

2. Work With a Real Estate Agent

What if there was someone a home buyer could hire who knew everything about the housing market and could help with every part of buying a new home, and at the end of it, the buyer didn’t even have to pay them? These are real estate agents, and they are an essential part of buying a new home. They know the ins and outs of everything related to buying  and selling, and they get paid a commission that comes out of the money the seller gets from the home, so buyers who are short on cash don’t have to worry about choosing between a home and an agent. 

3. Find the Right Home

There are a lot of potential homes on the market, so it can be useful for buyers to make a list of the various things they want (like a gas stove or a pool) and the things they need (like first floor laundry and accessibility ramps). This way the agent helping the buyer can easily weed out the homes that aren’t good for the buyer and they only look at the ones that are promising. 

4. Make an Offer

After finding a home and deciding it’s the right one, the buyer will have the opportunity to put in an offer to purchase it. The real estate agent will handle the actual submission of the offer, and before that, they can also provide advice about how much money the buyer should offer. If it’s a buyer’s market, the agent may suggest offering lower than the home’s asking price. If it’s a seller’s market, the agent may recommend offering more than the asking price to help ensure that the offer is accepted.

5. Have the Home Inspected

Once the offer has been accepted, the buyer has a limited amount of time to hire a home inspector to come look at the new home. The inspector will look for anything that may be wrong with the home such as leaky faucets or mold growth, and if anything is found, it may be required that the seller fix it before the home can officially be sold. Having the home inspected helps to ensure that the home is safe to live in, so this step should never be skipped. 

6. Close on the home

The final step of purchasing  new home is to go to the closing. This is when the buyer will get things like the key and garage door opener and all parties involved will sign and finalize any last paperwork that the real estate agency requires. Once this is done, the Franklin home is officially purchased, and the buyer can begin moving in at the agreed upon time.

There are quite a few steps involved in purchasing a home, but these six steps outline the basic process so any buyer can have a better idea of what goes into it.