Are you planning to buy your home this year? Here are some great house shopping tips that you should consider before you make the single most important investment decision of your life.
1. Shop Around
Start with reading the classifieds (particularly the Sunday classified), visiting open houses and calling up Realtors to let them know the kind of house in which you are interested. Shopping around for a house can be exciting, but can also be equally challenging. You won’t necessarily find the house you want immediately. In fact, even if you identify one that you really love, you should make sure you look at others within the same price range and/or within similar communities. Otherwise, you may realize later that much better options were available and regret any hurried decision made.
2. Check Other Housing Related Websites
Feel free to visit other websites, which contain real estate listings, to expand your option in finding the right place.
3. Apply for an Eligibility Letter
This will tell you exactly how much you can afford to borrow and will give the vendor proof of what you are able to pay. To get your eligibility letter, make sure to bring in a letter from your employer stating the amount you currently earn, your NIS card, TRN card and a current identification (driver’s license, passport or national ID).
4. Watch for the Hidden Expenses
• An apartment may offer you the convenience of having people living in close proximity to you, but will you be able to manage the related maintenance costs?
• A house may need some modifications to make it suitable to your specific needs (for example: storage, re-tiling, security grill, water heating, fixtures & fittings etc.). All this may come at a high cost.
• A house may need substantial changes to the structure (for example: adding a room). These changes must conform to the restrictive covenants.
• You may have to sacrifice some social habits (for example: listening to loud music) in order to fit into the new community.
5. Inspect Before You Buy
Buying a house has some similarities to buying a car. Since you may not be an expert yourself, take along an experienced owner or housing construction worker. This person should be able to detect if the house has construction defects (in the structure, the electrical and/or the plumbing).
6. Prepare to Deposit as Much as Possible
Most property owners are now asking for larger deposits. So long before you decide you are going to buy your home, you should start saving towards it. To help with the costs, you may even consider asking your parents or good friends to make a contribution towards the deposit.
7. Decide Who Will Own the Property
If you are single, you will probably decide to have the title of the property in your name alone. But the law allows for allows for two or more persons to own the same piece of property at the same time. Two main forms of co-ownership are joint tenancy and tenancy in common. It is common for co-owners who are husband and wife to select joint tenancy especially if the property being bought is the matrimonial home. Joint tenancy ownership means when one owner dies, the survivor inherits the entire property. On the other hand, the tenancy-in-common arrangement means that if the owner dies, his share of the property would then go to his estate or the person(s) to who whom he has willed it.
Good luck on the house hunt!
May 8th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
When you have children you have to consider the location of the house, it should be somewhere close to the school so that it would not be hard for them to attend to. Next is the pricing of the property. These are the primary things that you need to be considering.