Buying a House..any tips or help

looking at buying my first house....just wondered if anyone had any tips or help (besides a big garage)??

take your time and find a house that you really like or think that you can make better. be carefully what you buy. look the house over very well. oh yeah have fun because it is a real pain in the ass to find the right house

I'm in the process of buying my first house now. Make sure you have a home inspection, it's optional, but definatly do it. The appraiser will do a quick once over, but doesn't go in-depth. It's only a couple of hundered dollars for a home inspection. And check out the neighborhood, some communities are deed restricted, meaning you can only have certain paint colors, styles of mailboxes, roof material ect.

Dont listen to a word the real estate agent says unless YOU hired them. If it is their listing, they are making thousands of dollars from the seller, so they will say anything to get you to buy. Just be careful, do your research, and DONT buy out of your price range. Having a nice house is great, but if you can't do anything but sit at home and eat ramen noodles due to your high ass mortgage payment, it aint as fun!

Good luck.

im a realtor, and i agree with one thing thats been said here and that is that you should go to a real estate office and get yourself your own REALTOR...theres a difference between a real estate agent and a REALTOR....realtors have a better work ethic. you dont want to buy directly from a seller or there agent. You want an agent working for you. And make sure the agent doesnt charge you anything the seller should be paying both ends of the commission.

As far as the top ramen thing well i say buy what you want sometimes buying a home is worth the struggle. You have to imagine this....youll be earning hundreds if not thousands of dollars a month on your equity. so even if you have to adjust your lifestyle it will be worth it in th end. Real estate is the best investment. Look at somebody like Trump, hes only rich cause of investing in real estate. well anyways enough ranting about real estate. youre making a wise decision and good luck with it.

I recently purchased a house, it great. Id say dont get overly excited about about changing things and fixing things. Take it one project at a time, I ended up with several projects at once, its overwhelming and you end up spending ALL your time getting them done. Oh yeah, if your buying it with a girlfriend or wife, make sure she understands this as well, that is what happened/happens to me, I love her to death though.

Yeah, when you buy, if you pay points for a mortgage, your getting fugged, SAY NO TO POINTS! And watch for pre-payment penalties, you do not want one!

my mom is a real estate agent in the cleveland area so i know some stuff about getting a nice home for cheap. my best advice is to find a home that needs work for cheap and build it into what you want. we do about 3 rehabs a year to make money and do quite well at it. be patient and if you have carpentry or any home related skills you will do just fine. when we sell houses we generally make 20-30 on them and turn them over in about 3-4 months. we sell them with all new paint,carpet,usually new kitchens,windows and new furnaces. if we can make money consistantly off doing it this way you can get your self a good home for cheap and better yet it will be what you want it to be. the market is flooded with homes that are repoed,drug houses or estates due to the economy. dont settle for the first house you see and always look for major structure problems,leaking, or damage. if you need a good real estate agent and possibly plan on moving to the cleveland area hit me up and we can help you find something nice.

I don't know how your state is but here in FL, there are a number of programs you can get in that assist first-time home buyers. For instance, when I purchase my first house I signed into a program that GAVE me $15,000 to use toward the house. Part of that was used for my closing costs and the rest went toward a down payment. The only stipulation was that I had to live in the house for 10 years or pay back a pro-rated amount when I sold it. I live in it for 5 years and had to give back $7,500 for the 5 years left on my term. But even with having to pay that back it was def worth it. I had a great downpayment that dropped my payment significantly. This program was called S.H.I.P. but I dont' know what it would be called where u are or if there even is one. You could also check FHA programs.

Live at home until your parents are old enough to put in a home and just stay there.