1. Buying a house Includes Purchasing Home Insurance
We were so blessed to have a realtor who was truly the whole package, her name was Lillian Hernandez and she was a coworker of mine. She answered all the questions I had and even had all the resources that we needed in purchasing insurance, talking to a broker for home loans and even helped us hire a home inspector. All of this happens fairly quickly after your offer has been chosen, so when having very little time to find a home insurance, Lillian was there to the rescue to inform us of one. My advice to you is to have a home insurance in mind; therefore you aren’t cramping it all in the last minute.
2. Surprise Supplemental Tax Bill
Since our house was a fixer upper, we were blessed to be able to purchase the house below the value price. On the other hand, what we wern’t aware of is having to pay a Supplemental Tax bill due to that case. This was a major surprise for us and we weren’t ready to pay for that bill, but we did by working our butts off on a side job we had that I will not mention here. This is my advice to you, please save some cushion money for any surprise bills that might appear. Therefore, you aren’t looking for another job to pay for it, like we did.
3. Property Tax is a Big Deal
Oh my, we learned the definition of the word property tax the hard way. This is a gigantic bill that almost looks like your mortgage loan bill, so don’t mix them up. Luckily, we already agreed that it be added to our monthly mortgage bill, so we didn’t worry about paying it seperately from our mortgage. When I first got this bill, I questioned our broker with so much questions. Luckily, we didn’t scare him away and he was ok with us messaging him at night to get some answers.
4. Closing Cost
Outside of your down payment, you do have to pay for closing cost which is the cost of all the additional fees. Don’t feel bad questioning your realtor, they can give you a detailed list of the fees and the average cost of the closing cost.
5. That Chunk of a Down Payment
Personally, we thought putting the majority of our savings on our down payment would be the best choice to bring down our monthly payment, but we are so glad we didn’t. Our realtor suggested that we keep additional money for renovating our home, which was the best advice we hadtaken from her. We had just enough money to renovate the whole house without having to wait for our upcoming paychecks. Also, our monthly payment was still manageable. I think there is no wrong or right reason for this, so choose what you think is best for you.
6. Equity
This is the great news about buying your house. When buying your house, you hope to gain equity. As prices of houses increases, the equity of your house rises. If you ever plan to sell your house, this is something you can look forward to.
Thanks Designer Geeks for reading. I hope this helped you in some kind of way.
Love,
Jessie and Janette Wong