by Marco Di Gabriele
So you’ve decided to buy your first home in Philadelphia.
Congratulations!
Buying your first home is exciting, but it can also be overwhelming. You may be asking yourself - "where do I event start?"
Many buyers who are in the early stages of their search don't even know where to begin, and though everyone has a different way of identifying their criteria for buying a new home, sometimes it helps to have an outline to get started.
1) Find Out What You Can Afford
The best place to start is with your price range. Without an idea of what you can afford, diving into Zillow won't do you much good. How will you know what to look for if you don't know how much you can spend?
To begin building your home buying criteria, you should start by figuring out the price range that you should be looking in. The best way to do this is to get a pre-approval.
If you don't know about the importance of a pre-approval, you can read my post about why you need one before shopping around. Long story short, a pre-approval allows you to identify what price range you can obtain a mortgage within.
2) Decide On Your Ideal Price Range
After you figure out what you are able to spend, you should re-evaluate and consider what you actually feel comfortable spending.
Just because you are pre-approved up to $400,000, doesn't necessarily mean that you need to buy a house for $399,000. You may decide that the top end of your budget is $325,000 even though you can afford more.
Determining your ideal budget will serve as a basis for building the rest of your criteria, and will help you to understand how much value you can get in different areas based on how much you want to spend.
3) Identify Your Needs
After you've identified the price range that you should be looking in, it's time for some self-reflection. On a basic level, identifying your needs stems from figuring out exactly why you are moving and where you see yourself in the future.
Some people decide to buy a larger home because they need more room to grow a family. Others decide that they need to downsize because they aren't utilizing all the space in their current home.
Regardless, before starting your search you should have an idea of what you are looking for in a home. Some of the key factors to look at are bedrooms, bathrooms, square footage, & parking.
4) Location, Location, Location
Ultimately, location is typically the single most important factor to impact your search criteria. Philadelphia is a city that has many neighborhoods, each with their own distinctive styles, advantages, & disadvantages.
Some of the things to think about when looking at different areas in the city are:
- Accessibility to transportation
- Location relative to your place of work
- Vicinity to Center City
- Nightlife/Shopping/Food
- Parks & Recreation
- Price range of homes in the area
When it comes down to it, you could find the perfect house that fits everything you are looking for, but if it's not in the right location then you most likely won't end up buying.
5) Find A Knowledgable Local Agent To Work With
Finding an agent who understands the local market can go a long way in making your search simpler.
An agent who knows the different areas in the city and takes the time to understand your needs, can easily give you a recommendation on which areas you may want to be looking in.
With the limited inventory on the market, it's also important to have an agent who is in tune with the new development happening in every neighborhood. This will allow them to potentially bring you opportunities that are not yet listed on the market.
6) Ask For Access To The MLS
Once you've found an agent to work with, they will be able to set you up with access to the MLS.
The MLS stands for the Multiple Listing Service, and it is essentially the database where every Realtor will list the information for the properties that they have available for sale.
Having access to the MLS gives you the ability to be notified as properties that fit your criteria come on and off of the market in the areas that you are searching in. As you view the new properties that are coming onto the market, you can tell your realtor which ones you want to go see, and which ones don't interest you.
7) Stay Calm
Buying your first home can be overwhelming, but try to stay calm and take things ones step at a time. Following the outline above & using our buyer's checklist will help you to set up a basic search criteria to help your get started. If you need any help along the way, feel free to contact me using the chat box in the bottom right corner of the screen.
