Buying Our First Home - Where to Even Begin?

Buying a house is overwhelming to me.

I don't have to tell you that buying a house is overwhelming.

As a first-time home buyer we know absolutely nothing about it.

There are many different paths to take depending on your situation and finances. Books and online articles give you some guidance but they end up being very general and covering too many options.

In this article I will share what we are doing and where we are starting the house buying process.

Where We Are At

This early in the process, we haven't talked to anyone, we haven't organized our finances we haven't done any external steps to buying a house.

The only thing we know for sure is that we are tired living in an apartment and we are ready to buy a house.

Create a List

First thing we did was to create a list:

• What do we want and what we don't want
• What are our monthly expenses?
• What are our monthly income?
• How much do we have saved up?
• What is the price range for the house to buy?
• How much can we afford to put down on a house as a down payment?
• What are our non-negotiable, must haves in a house?

The answers we came up with is a good place to start. When the time comes we can be flexible depending on a siltation.

Here are some of the things we came up with:

• We will use a real estate agent to complete the purchase. We don't want to go through this ourselves.
• We would like to put down 20% to avoid Property Mortgage Insurance (PMI) and actually with a Joint VA program (Veteran and Non-Veteran co-borrower we may only need 14% or less for down payment).
• We want to have at least $10,000+ in savings remaining as we move into the house
• 4 bedroom (3 is ok), 2 bath with a yard, garage (preferably) and back patio
• 80%+ move-in ready, not a fixer upper
• Concrete block
• In Flood Zone X

We also have family that has been through this process before and are willing to help.

Getting Finances in Order

We went through self-evaluation of our finances. We looked at our debt, our monthly income and current savings.

• How much debt do we have?
• What is our monthly income?
• How much do we have saved up for a down payment?

We wanted to pay no more than $1,500 in monthly mortgage. At the time our monthly apartment rent was $1,600+ with utilities, electricity and cable added in. So we had a number we wanted to hit for each monthly mortgage payment.

We wanted to have 20% down-payment to avoid Mortgage Insurance and higher down-payment also helps with lower monthly mortgage payement.

To get these numbers we searched the neighborhoods we wanted to buy the house in and what they were selling for.

Basically, we were doing market research.

We were very deliberate with what we wanted, how much we wanted to pay and what type of a home we wanted to buy.

It is now time to get pre-approval letter from a lender.