Are you thinking about buying a home soon or perhaps you've already started,
and maybe you feel a bit confused or stressed out because you don't know what
the next steps are,
or perhaps don't understand each step of the process and what it entails.
Don't worry. I'm Jasben Lai with the LiveInnerCity real estate team.
And today I'm going to take you through step-by-step and give you tips along the
way so that you fully understand the entire process from beginning to end.
Now, a bit of a disclaimer, I'm a Calgary, Alberta,
Canada realtor and a lot of this process does apply to other cities in
Canada for the most part, as well as possibly some other countries.
And the main thing is that the process might differ slightly.
And also you might find that the terms I use are also different.
So without further ado,
I have this workflow built out in a visual way,
but I'm going to go through it step-by-step. So let's take you through it.
First of all, when you first meet with your realtor,
you're going to want to have a buyer strategy session.
And typically this takes about an hour of your time.
And what we go through in this meeting is really dive into WHY
it's a priority for you to look at buying a home right now.
And it's really for us as realtors to understand your situation on a deeper
level so that we can really dive into it and understand the why and
what we use to really understand the why,
because everyone can start with saying, I want three bedrooms.
I need a double garage. I need a finished basement.
Those are what we use the vision exercise to really dive into.
Why do you need those things? For example,
maybe you have a family or small family of three,
and you're planning to have a second child.
So in that case, that three bedrooms, it does work,
but now we're linking the what's and the why's.
And when we understand why we can have the clarity needed to understand
how we're going to go about looking for homes and really be focused on the homes
that are the best fit,
rather than looking at all these other ones that may not be a good fit for you.
Also, part of the vision exercise is we're going to look at a longer
time period. You want longevity in the home as much as possible,
unless of course you do have a plan for something a little bit shorter.
So I would usually say about five plus years,
at least you want to stay in this home so that you're not kind of switching
homes because there's a bit of risk there. So here's a tip for you.
If you're switching homes all the time,
say maybe you're a little bit short-sighted and you buy your first home and it's
a condo and you're a single person at this time and you meet
a lovely lady or a lovely man, and you guys get together and decide,
"Hey, we want to live together.".
Maybe that one condo is no longer that great of a fit for you because you were
going to have a plan to have children at some point,
if that's what you plan to do. Now,
it might be a bit short-sighted because that condo is no longer a
fit for you. Now you're going to have to sell that condo perhaps,
and also buy a new one. Now in that situation, it really depends on the market.
And that's why I say there's risk.
And you might be selling that condo in a not ideal market.
So you might not get as much money for it.
And then buying something that might not be a good price as well.
So that's why we want to have longevity when we look at your vision.
The next thing is who you work with matters.
And what I mean by that is we would discuss how a realtor
like myself is going to be helping you and who you do pick as a realtor is
very, very important.
If you want to know more about how to choose the right realtor,
we have a few videos on that and I'll leave a link in the description below.
Don't worry about taking notes here,
because we're going to leave a downloadable for this exact process workflow
for home buying for you for free. So you can go ahead and download that.
The next thing that we talked about in the buyer strategy session is the
principles of buying.
These are developed over years of experience in our team to really
understand what are the goal posts?
How do we structure the entire process and what to
expect?
And this is really so you understand exactly how this home buying process
happens, whether you're a first-time home buyer or a seasoned home buyer,
it's just a reminder for you so that things can go very smoothly and you
can expect what's going to happen in the next steps.
Then the next step in this buyer strategy session is to really dive
into what the costs are. Now,
this is really important because a lot of people don't have the clarity
about what's needed in terms of the costs that come with buying a home.
And these are things such as lawyer fees,
you may need to get an appraisal through your lender,
perhaps title insurance, to close the deal.
Also, we're going to talk about realtor commissions, but at least in Alberta,
it's a standard.
Most of the time that sellers would pay our fee for both
buyer and seller agents. So it's not something you usually need to worry about.
And then we're going to actually go over this entire home buyer process with
you. And one of the things that we like to do is give you a visual.
If you're a visual learner like myself,
and really be able to see and map it down.
So you understand where you are in the process at all times,
that really takes the stress out of it.
It makes it a lot easier for you to stay ahead of the game by preparing
yourself for the next steps.
And then of course, I just said, next steps.
We do give you the next steps in this process.
And then we go dive into the second step, which is the Mortgage Pre-approval.
Now you might be like, okay, Jaz.
Maybe I just want to start looking at homes first and that's okay.
But we really recommend doing the mortgage pre-approval first because it
determines what you buy and where without doing the mortgage pre-approval first,
which is not within your control.
The bank will decide what you actually qualify for.
And instead of maybe settling on a property that it's a little bit
lower and you could have afforded a little bit more,
or maybe looking at properties that are a little bit higher price than what you
actually qualify for.
It's always good not to kind of fall in those two categories so
that you can fully expect,
and we can maximize that qualifying amount if you like so that we can get you
the best fit property for what is affordable for you.
Because no one really wants to be house poor at all. Right?
And then we do that pre-approval application and then bank will require some
documentation to verify and really provide the qualifying amount,
including the interest rate and what type of mortgage,
if you want to know more about mortgages, I'm not the mortgage guy,
Felix is in our team. So you can always message him.
And we have a few videos that we'll also leave in the link in the description
below so that you can really check out. Now,
moving down into the third step.
Now that's really setting up and viewing homes. This is what,
what is the fun part!
And it's really exciting because buying a home is a really big deal.
It's very fulfilling. And some of you guys may not know,
but I recently bought my second home, which I'm very proud of.
And it takes a little bit of time sometimes.
But if you have a very dialed in vision,
then you'll be able to find something for yourself that is going to be the right
fit, not only for today, but also for years to come.
Now, when we set up the showings for you, we're going to schedule them.
We're going to go and view homes.
Cause remember big tip there never buy our photos. Photos these
days they can use different exposure,
angles lenses to really maximize and make the property look almost
completely different. And you know, we get that you know,
feedback all the time is "This property looks nothing like the photos."
And that can either be better than photos are worse than the photos you just
can't trust it.
What you can do is if it's the right fit, like the specifications,
the locations, the features, and the lifestyle, the property offers,
then it would make sense to go view the home in person.
That's why that's we go in, verify it by going to see the property in person.
Now,
do any of the homes align with your vision? That's kind of the next step there.
You have to ask yourself based on the vision exercise that we have done with
you, does it line up with it?
And just know it's very normal for a vision exercise to really
get evolved over time,
because maybe you think you wanted something to begin with and then it ends up,
you've seen a few homes and maybe you don't need that.
Maybe something else that you'd haven't thought of that you did end up seeing in
a home becomes more important.
So these things evolve over time and it's important to really get dialed in.
Now one of the things that I'd like to share with you,
just a quick example - there was a couple who were looking for an inner city
property because they love the lifestyle. And throughout the process,
their vision evolved so much that they ended up buying in the suburbs.
And one of the comments they gave to me was, you know,
without the vision exercise, as a starting point,
and being able to revise it along the way,
they would not have been able to come up with this end vision,
which was completely 180 degrees different from where they started.
So that's why we just start at this point in the buyer strategy session with the
vision exercise.
And then we revise your vision exercise as things change
as you look at homes.
And then here, if you say yes, then maybe you want to consider making an offer.
In that case, then we would move to the next step. And if it's no,
we'll go back to step three and then we'll go view some more homes. Moving
to step four. Now, if you do choose to make an offer,
what we're going to do first is do a comparative market analysis or CMA.
And we want to understand in that CMA - what the market value of this home
is first. And then we backwards engineered offer strategy.
And then based on what your needs are in terms of possession date,
how long your conditions are? If we have financing, if we have home inspection,
we're going to write all those things in,
and we're going to go ahead and write that offer. Next.
We're going to submit that offer to the listing agent,
and then we're going to negotiate these things.
Normally, there's a price negotiation.
We're going to talk about possession date. There's going to be a deposit,
which is negotiable, and there's going to be conditions like I mentioned,
financing home inspection are fairly common,
but there could be other conditions. And you can discuss with your realtor,
how to work with those.
And then we might put some terms such as a 48/24 hour walkthrough.
Perhaps we want to make sure that the seller that professionally cleans the home
first prior to possession, these are kind of the terms that we can add in there.
And then we're going to add a offer expiring. And then next,
if your offer gets accepted, we're now in the conditional period at step five.
And that's when we have a amount of time to finalize our
condition, say we have financing, so we need to go get that mortgage approval.
And typically the standard is normally about 10 business days,
but it could vary based on the market conditions. Right now,
if we have 10 businesses get financing,
you're going to have to submit some documents to the bank.
You'll have to work with your broker or your lender specialist to really get
everything in line for that mortgage.
Next, we're going to need to deliver a deposit check.
And that's usually in certified funds. So, things like a bank draft,
a certified check, perhaps even a wire transfer,
but there are several ways to do that.
And next you're going to want to have a home inspection. It's not necessary,
but it is something that our team highly recommends and we're going to need to
perform that home inspection, figure out. Now, if we have any issues,
we're going to go back to the seller and we're going to try to negotiate for you
in terms of what we can come up as a remedy. And if both sides agree,
then that's great. We're going to write those into the offer. And,
and then we can go ahead and waiver conditions.
Now, if you do find issues and you can't come to an agreement with the seller,
then what we do is we send a non-waiver and we kill the deal and walk away
from this property. Now, if we proceed with the deal,
then we're going to be in the firm offer stage at step six.
And this is the time now that we have everything finalized,
that we need to start packing our belongings and preparing for our move,
as well as lining up in hiring a lawyer of your choice.
And we need to go and sign it with the lawyers. After that period of time,
if you do have a property walkthrough term written into your contract,
then you're going to go with and verify that. A. the sellers have moved out. B.
There's no material differences in what property had originally
seen. And now at the property walkthrough,
those are the things we're going to check.
Now, if you're not sure what to check during a property walkthrough,
we have a list for you,
and we can leave that in the link in the description for you to download.
And then we move to step seven, which is the day you've been waiting for.
This is possession day when you get the keys to your new home,
and this is normally around noon, but it could slightly vary,
it could be about 11:00 AM to about 1:00 PM,
depending on how the lawyers are working on it.
But the realtor is going to meet you over at the property and give you the
new keys to your property. And then you take possession.
And now the real fun starts because you're going to take this house that you
bought and really build it into the home that you envisioned from the beach.
Give me the,
hopefully you found a lot of value in this and remember to download the copy of
this workflow just so you can visually follow through if you like.
And if you have any questions, please leave that in the comment section below.
And we love to hear to support by your likes and your shares and make sure you
subscribe to our channel. If you do want to continue to get our content,
my name is Jasben Lai with the LiveInnerCity real estate team and it's been
my pleasure to walk you through this journey. We'll see you in the next one.