5 Surprise-Prevention Strategies for Home Buyers

1. Study up. As a smart manager of your life and your finances, it’s your duty to get as detailed a primer on the ins and outs of home buying as you need to feel comfortable and confident as you move forward with the process: what lenders require, the nuts and bolts of a purchase transaction, that sort of thing. But when you’re specifically seeking to minimize the risk of unpleasant surprises, you’ve got to take your real estate education to the next level, and study up on some very specific subject matter: your local market, in real-time.

2. Team up. It never ceases to amaze me the amount of expertise and plain old help that goes untapped -and the avoidable stress and expense that are incurred - because buyers don’t even think to express certain concerns to their real estate and mortgage pros. If there are particular potential surprises or other issues that keep you up at night, you should clearly express those to your team of real estate and mortgage professionals, and enlist their help in keeping them at bay.

3. Keep up. There are a number of critical dates and deadlines in a home buying transaction by which decisions and deliverables and course-corrections must be made or the seeds for a scary surprise take root. And only some of the time are you, buyer, in control of making sure those timelines stay on track; many other times, loan underwriters, appraisers, inspectors and lenders are responsible for achieving these important must-meet dates. What you can control is your own awareness of all these calendar points, so that you can make more or less urgent nudges and check-ins, as needed, in order to ensure that things either (a) stay on track, or (b) don’t take you by surprise, if they get off track.

4. Fess up. It’s one thing to be surprised bysomething you have no control over. Butimagine how you’d feel if your deal was killed bya surprise that you (and only you) could easilyhave avoided! I’ve personally seen this happen anumber of times. One buyer I know ended uplosing her dream home - and her deposit moneydue to false information on her loan application.She’d apparently gotten away with it on anumber of credit applications, but a mortgage isan entirely different animal.

5. Fluff up. Your cash and time cushions, that is. Thereason home buying surprises are so stressful isthat they threaten to do one of two things: (a)screw up our timelines for moving, or (b) force us tocome up with more cash than we have at hand toclose the deal. If you get just a few days away fromclosing, bags and boxes packed, and are told youneed to bring in just an extra few thousand dollarsto close the deal, it can feel like your home -actually, your life! - is being held hostage for extracash, on the one transaction you’ve already spentyears saving up for.

Realtors: What are the most common, unpleasant surprises you see arise during home buying, and

what advice do you give your clients for preventing them?

Randy BettInvestment Realtor/Author/Investor

Real Estate Professionals Inc.Better Group Real Estate 202-5403 Crowchild Trail NWCalgary, AB T3B 4Z1

Phone:403-774-7464 Ext:1Fax:403-208-0082Toll Free fax:888-711-6801

Randy Bettwww.BetterGroupRealEstate.ca