Home Buying Timeline Silicon Valley Real Estate
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Once the appraisal is complete, buyers receive a report detailing the property, neighborhood, and local housing sales. Real estate laws vary by location, so you may need additional information. Your real estate agent or attorney can confirm that your offer letter complies with local regulations. With the result that they create a final appraisal report and offer their professional opinion.
Many home buyers begin their journey before talking to a lender. Home-buying begins when you first see yourself as a future homeowner. Once you have signed the CD and already have your CTC, there will be a 3 day waiting period before you can sign your loan docs.
Step 1: Find A Real Estate Agent
While this process usually takes around 10 to 15 days, it may take longer depending on your financial circumstances. As soon as you pay for your appraisal and lock in your interest rate, your lender will order an appraisal. This is to determine the fair market value of the home you’re about to purchase—in other words, how much it’s really worth. Among other things, appraisers review recent comparable sales of similar homes in your area (aka “comps”) to determine the home’s true value. An appraisal is important to ensure that neither you nor your lender are paying more than the home is worth.
After you’ve cleaned up your credit, saved up some money, and investigated down-payment assistance, it’s time to get preapproved for a mortgage. This is the last step before you move on to the “actively looking” part of the homebuying timeline. The closing disclosure will contain the exact figures of your monthly mortgage payment, as well as how much it will cost to close on your loan. If you have any questions, this is the time to ask your lender before you go to the closing table. Mortgage pre-approval is the process of determining how much money you can borrow to buy a home. To pre-approve you, lenders look at your income, assets, and credit score and decide what loans you could be approved for, how much you can borrow and what your interest rate might be.
Finding a Home to Buy: 10 weeks
In general, you can expect the homebuying process to take about four to six months from start to finish. While that might seem long, it could be shorter—or longer—depending on a variety of factors, like how choosy you are about where you live, how competitive your local market is, and more. With interest rates rising, everyone’s in a rush to buy a home before rates surge even higher.
To simplify things, we’ve broken down the steps and created the ultimate homebuying process timeline to help you navigate all the twists and turns along the way. Depending on your lender and how busy the mortgage market is, you’ll probably need to apply at least 30 days before the closing date. In December 2020, the average time to close a home loan was 58 days, according to data from ICE Mortgage Technology. The contract may also specify you have to have proof of mortgage by a specific date. Buying a house is (as you’ve undoubtedly heard) is the biggest and most complex financial decision you’ll ever make. The inspections themselves usually only take a few hours, but it can take several days to receive the reports back from the inspectors.
Get pre-approved for a mortgage
The closing typically takes place at your real estate agent’s office or the office of the escrow company or title company handling the paperwork. Come to closing day prepared with your government-issued ID and any requested documents. Bring a cashier’s check for your down payment and be prepared to pay any closing costs. Now all that’s left to do is close escrow and sign the required paperwork. After the mortgage loan has been approved, the buyer’s lender wires the funds to escrow.
This can be speedy if you’re trying to buy a foreclosure, but in a seller’s market, you may beheld in suspensea bit longeras you await a response. The seller may accept or reject your offer, or they may send you a counteroffer, kicking off a round of negotiations. Take the time to think about the things you absolutely need in your new home as well as the things you want but could do without . These priorities will help you as you start browsing online for homes that fit the bill.
A Simple Home Buying Timeline For First-Time Buyers
You can also check with the state’s real estate licensing board to see if there are any complaints or legal proceedings filed against the agent or broker. Help you prepare an offer so you don’t overpay for a home and handle the negotiations. The entire appraisal process can take up to two weeks to complete. So if getting this real estate deal over and done is a high priority, make sure to ask if a remote closing is an option. First-time homebuyers might also face some tough competition and get dragged into bidding wars, which could drive up the price or knock them out of the running. It’s a good idea to create a house-hunting checklist where you can keep track of that kind of information.
However, when you finally find The House, you may need to act fast when you make an offer. If you wait to apply for a mortgage until you’ve found a house you want to bid on, you could lose out to someone who’s already preapproved. “If you want to buy a house, you need to have money saved up,” says April Mason, an agent in Corpus Christi, Texas, who has completed 24% more sales than the average agent in her market. You can get a loan with a smaller down payment, but you’ll likely have to pay for mortgage insurance, which will increase your monthly mortgage bill. It takes a lot of planning and preparation, possibly even some soul-searching, to decide what’s the right move in your situation. A start-to-finish timeline showing every step to buy a house, and how long you can expect it all to take.
The home closing is the point in the process in which all parties come together to sign all the documents and officially exchange ownership of the home. Overall, the best thing buyers can do is be as responsive as possible to requests that come from the lender or underwriter. As soon as you have a house under contract, you want to arrange for a home inspection. Once you sign the document with your offer and your agent conveys it to the seller’s agent, things get serious. After her buyers clearly define what they are looking for, she says they find a home in an average of three weeks.
The average is 50 days, but the next two steps can and should be completed while you’re waiting for your closing day. It only takes one to five business days to getmortgage pre-approval, but spend the time to research different lenders andmortgage typesso you get the best possible deal. Of course, you could sign with the first agent you find online, which could take as little as a day, but it’s smart to take some time whenfinding a real estate agent. Do some research, come up withquestions for potential real estate agents, and check out their specialties and customer reviews. Agents are a great asset that cost you nothing, so find one you feel comfortable with. Trulia can help you connect with trustworthy Premier Agents who know your area and will work hard for you.
This seems straightforward, but divorces and inherited ownership can complicate things. If someone other than the seller has some ownership in the property, they can interfere with the sale. The end goal is to ensure the seller has the right to sell the home, and protect the buyer’s future ownership. Everyone is entitled to have their own representation, and should. Once escrow closes, someone will hand you keys per your agreement.
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