Congratulations on starting the process of buying a house in Las Vegas. Whether you are in the very beginning stages or in the middle, this information I’m about to share with you might help you.
So if you’re thinking of buying a house, you are probably reading and have read all the articles available about the Home Buying Process. Though you’ve read multiple articles and watched multiple videos, everything might seem to still be difficult and scary about buying a house.
The next step in the Las Vegas Home Buying Process is finding a Realtor to work with. When buying a house in Las Vegas, you as the buyer, will not pay the Realtor any fee or commission unless you and the realtor agree on some kind of compensation. The Seller will be the one to pay in commission to your Realtor.
After meeting with a Realtor and you have decided on who you are going to work with, the next step is to speak with a Mortgage Lender alongside with your Realtor and get Pre-Qualified.
- Getting Pre-Qualified means you are starting the process of getting a mortgage company to determine how much you can borrow based on your Debt to Income ratio. This is when a loan officer takes your information and they make an assessment of your income, taxes, credit, to verify that you can be approved for a loan and how much the amount you are able to purchase.
- Get Prequalified First – It is very important to know how much you can afford before even looking at houses because we don’t want to start looking at houses that you might fall in love with and next thing we know, we don’t qualify for a loan or we don’t qualify for that price range. We need to get our Pre-Qualification first before looking at homes.
- Affordability – You might qualify for an amount that is very high. For example, if you want to only purchase a home at a price of $350,000, you might qualify for $500,000. Though you qualified for a lot more, it doesn’t mean we need to purchase at $500,000. We can stick with our $350,000.
- Rule Of Thumb – We always want to base our price range based on the monthly payment we wish to make every month or what we can afford comfortably. This is a rule of thumb for me and my clients. Let’s start with how much comfortably can we afford.
- Downpayment and Closing Cost– During the lending process, we will get to figure out how much downpayment we will need and how much in closing cost we are expecting to pay. In a traditional transaction of buying a house, downpayment is between 3% to 5% minimum depending on the type of loan. Closing Cost is anywhere from 2% to 3.5% and again depending on the type of loan and downpayment.
- First Time Home Buyer – If you are a first time home buyer, there are first time home buyer programs in Las Vegas that we can use and qualify for. The first time home buyer program will pay up to 5% of our downpayment. For more information on the First Time Home Buyer Program, Click here : First Time Home Buyer Program Las Vegas Downpayment Assistant Program
- Closing Cost – Closing cost are all the fees included when purchasing a house. Both buyer and seller actually have their own closing cost. Typically, the home buyer’s closing cost includes the mortgage loan, appraisal fees, property taxes, homeowner’s insurance, and title and escrow fees.
4. Search For Your Dream Home
One we are pre-qualified and we know exactly how much we can afford, it is now time to look for your home. Having a game plan is very important when it comes to finally starting to look for your new home.
Here is what a game plan should look like:
- Chose an area – What area, part of town, community or neighborhood do you see yourself living in for the next 5 years?
- Area Must Haves – We need to figure out what features and benefits should your area or neighborhood should have or be close proximity to.
- Consider schools, parks, churches.
- Do we want to be close to entertainment?
- The Dream House – What is our ideal house? Figure out the features and benefits of your ideal dream home. What are my Wants vs Needs?
- How many bedrooms and bathrooms?
- What size in Square Footage?
- Do we want a backyard?
- Do we prefer two stories or one story?
Finding your new home is one of the most exciting experience but could also be an overwhelming one. Before we even begin, we need to figure out what your ideal dream home is, figure out our wants vs needs. Knowing these few items will help us become a successful home buyer in Las Vegas
5. Make An Offer.
Once we find your ideal dream home and we have made sure that this is the home we see ourselves falling in love and seeing ourselves living in for the next 5 years, then it’s time to make an offer to purchase it.
We will only make an offer once we know for sure that you and the home are a perfect match. Consider all the features and benefits as well as your wants and needs. Let’s check everything in the list!
6. Escrow Process
When our offer gets accepted, we will open what we call an escrow. The Escrow company is a third party service that will help us facilitate the home buying from when the offer is accepted all the way to closing on your home.
Escrow Step by Step
- Open Escrow
- Home Inspections
- Request For Repairs
- Appraisal
- Final Loan Approval
- Final Walkthrough & Signing Day
- Welcome Home!
Congratulations! That is how easy the process is when buying a house in Las Vegas and surrounding areas.
My goal is to help streamline the process, make it easier, stress free, and most importantly you enjoy the process. Buying a house is one of the biggest purchase anyone will ever have to make in their lifetime. Let’s make it fun and an enjoyable process.
