First Time Buyers

What buying your first house actually involves — in order, in plain language, including the parts nobody mentions until they’re happening.

There’s no such thing as a stupid question here. There is such a thing as an expensive one you didn’t ask.

Most first-time buyers arrive worried they’re behind — that everyone else understood something they missed. They didn’t. This process is genuinely opaque, it uses words that mean something different than they sound like, and nearly all of it is learned once and then never again. Here’s the whole thing, start to finish.

Before you look at a single house

Looking is the fun part and it’s the wrong place to start. Three things come first.

Know what you can spend, not what you’ll be approved for

These are different numbers and the gap between them is often large. A lender calculates what you’re capable of paying based on income and debts. It doesn’t know you want to keep travelling, or that your car is eight years old, or that you’d like to still be saving something each month.

Work out your own number first, before anyone hands you a bigger one. It’s much harder to walk it back afterward.

Understand what you actually need for a down payment

The twenty percent figure is the most persistent myth in this process, and it stops a lot of people who could already buy. Conventional loans go as low as three percent down for qualified buyers. FHA sits around three and a half. VA and USDA loans can require nothing down at all — and both matter here, because this region draws veterans and a surprising amount of it qualifies as rural for USDA purposes.

Less than twenty percent down usually means mortgage insurance, which adds to your monthly payment. That’s a real cost and worth understanding. It is not a reason to wait four more years while prices move.

Get pre-approved — not pre-qualified

These sound like the same thing and aren’t. A pre-qualification is an estimate based on what you told a lender. A pre-approval means they’ve verified it — pulled credit, reviewed income, looked at documents.

In a market where inventory is thin, an offer without a pre-approval usually isn’t competitive. Sellers read it as a buyer who hasn’t started properly.

Worth knowing: several mortgage inquiries within a short window count as one for credit-scoring purposes. Shopping lenders doesn’t damage your score the way people fear, and rates and fees vary more between lenders than most buyers expect.

What it costs beyond the down payment

This is the part that catches people, because the down payment gets all the attention and it isn’t the whole number.

• Closing costs — typically somewhere around two to five percent of the purchase price. Lender fees, title work, recording, prepaid taxes and insurance. Some of it is negotiable and some of it can be asked of the seller.
• Earnest money — a deposit showing you’re serious, held in escrow and credited toward your purchase at closing. You get it back if you walk away for a reason your contract protects. You may not if you walk away for one it doesn’t.
• Inspection — a few hundred dollars, paid by you, and the best money you’ll spend in this entire process.
• Appraisal — usually a lender requirement, usually your cost.
• Moving — obvious, and routinely underestimated.
• The first six months — on an older house, budget for something. Not because anything is wrong, but because there’s always something.

Arriving at closing having spent every dollar you had is the most common avoidable mistake in this process.

Working with an agent

You’ll sign a written agreement with a buyer’s agent before they show you homes. This became standard practice across the industry in 2024, and it’s a change worth understanding rather than skimming over.

The agreement sets out what your agent will do, how long it runs, and how they’re paid — including whether that comes from the seller’s side, from you, or some combination. Compensation is negotiable and always has been. Read it, ask what each part means, and ask what happens if it doesn’t work out.

One thing worth being clear about: the agent hosting an open house works for the seller. They’re often perfectly pleasant and they are not your representative. Anything you tell them about your budget or your enthusiasm is information they may be obliged to pass along.

Looking at houses

See a few you won’t buy. That sounds like wasted time and isn’t — you can’t calibrate what’s good value without something to compare against, and photographs are a poor substitute for standing in a room.

What to pay attention to that listing photos hide: ceiling height, natural light at the hour you’d actually be home, road noise, how the lot drains, the grade of the driveway, and whether the layout works or merely looks like it does. Wide-angle lenses make small rooms look generous. They do this on purpose.

What matters less than people think: paint color, carpet, light fixtures, landscaping, and anything else you’d change in a weekend. What matters more: layout, light, structure, systems, and location — the things you cannot change at all.

Making an offer

Price is one term among several, and in a competitive situation it’s frequently not the deciding one.

Also in play: your closing timeline, your financing type, the size of your earnest deposit, which contingencies you keep, and whether you’re asking the seller to contribute to your closing costs. A seller who needs to be out by a particular date may take less money from the buyer who can meet it.

Contingencies are your exits. They let you withdraw and keep your earnest money under defined circumstances — financing falls through, the inspection turns up something serious, the appraisal comes in low. Waiving them makes your offer stronger and makes you considerably more exposed. Sometimes that trade is worth making. You should know you’re making it.

What an inspection can and can’t tell you

An inspector spends a few hours looking at what’s visible and accessible. That’s genuinely valuable and it has limits worth understanding.

They will find: roof condition, obvious plumbing and electrical problems, HVAC age and function, drainage issues, visible structural concerns, and the accumulated small deferred maintenance of an older house.

They will not find: anything behind a wall, under a floor, or inside a sealed system. They don’t open up walls, and they aren’t specialists — a general inspector who suspects a foundation issue will tell you to bring in a structural engineer, which is the correct answer rather than a dodge.

On the housing stock here, specifically: knob-and-tube and cloth-wrapped wiring turn up regularly in homes from this era, and some insurers care a great deal. Older galvanized plumbing is common. Basements range from finished living space to something closer to a crawlspace. None of this means don’t buy the house. It means know what you’re buying, and price it in.

Go to the inspection if you possibly can. The written report is useful; three hours following someone knowledgeable around the house you’re about to own is far more so.

Between contract and closing

Typically thirty to forty-five days, and mostly waiting. In that window: your lender finishes underwriting, the appraisal happens, title is searched, and any inspection items get negotiated.

One rule that sounds trivial and is not: don’t change anything financial. No new credit cards, no financing a car, no changing jobs, no large unexplained deposits. Your lender re-verifies before closing, and purchases that seemed harmless have collapsed loans at the final stage.

If the appraisal comes in below your contract price, that’s a negotiation rather than a disaster — the seller can reduce, you can bring the difference, or you can meet somewhere between. If your financing contingency is intact, you also have the option to leave.

Questions worth asking that most people don’t

• How old is the roof, and is there documentation?
• Has the electrical been updated, and how much of it?
• Where does water go when it rains hard? Where does it pool?
• Which way does the driveway face, and what’s the grade?
• What can you hear from the bedroom at night — road, rail, neighbours?
• What are the utility costs, actually, across a full year?
• Is any part of the property in a flood plain?
• Why is the seller moving, and how long has this been listed?
• What was done without permits?

The one thing worth remembering about buying a home

In a number of circumstances, you are allowed to walk away. This can go from during the home showing stage before you are ever under contract, to at certain points when you are under contract, depending on the terms of the contract…

What matters is the terms of the contract. Once you are under contract depending on those terms you might not have the option to leave the contract, so communication with your agent about the terms of the purchase when you put your offer together and how everything is progressing after the offer has been accepted is critical.

What I tell my clients, especially buyers is to take the time you need to be sure about your purchase before the contract is signed.