I’m excited and nervous to say that we’re in escrow on a new home. Not only is this an exciting moment in our lives, it’s a scary moment as well. And definitely, a new eye-opening experience that we’ve learned a lot from.

My husband purchased our current home from family so we didn’t have to deal with loans, escrow, sellers, agents, etc. He secured a loan for the agreed purchase price, below market value, and took care of the process through a title company.

Purchasing a house on our own has been completely different and has really opened our eyes to the smart way to buy a house. And we cannot wait to move on to the next stage of our journey.

Selling Your Current Home

If you have to sell your current home in order to afford your next home, it’s always best to try and get the ball rolling there first if you can. When you go to purchase a new home and purchasing is contingent on selling your current home, your offer may not look as inviting as others who don’t need to sell.

Think of this as a domino effect. Some sales require more than one player and the more dominoes you have, the more difficult the sale gets. Assuring that you have a buyer lined up and are (hopefully) in escrow on the sale of your home can make the purchase of a new home a much quicker process.

Securing Financing

Head out to the bank and secure your financing. Find out what you qualify for and what you can actually afford. Consider writing out your budget if you don’t already and consider every monthly and yearly expense your family has. That way you can accurately estimate the mortgage payment you could pay.

While you can move forward with an offer on a house with a pre-approval letter, consider moving forward with your loan by locking in your interest rate and submitting your information to the underwriter at the bank. This will make things run quicker and smoother later on.

We found that by securing our financing we felt more secure in the offer we made on the home we wanted to purchase. And we knew exactly what our limits were and where we felt comfortable negotiating to. We did not want to exceed our budget.

Finding the Perfect Home

Now that you’ve gotten the ball rolling on the sale of your current home and securing financing for your new home, it’s time to start shopping! Now, this process is both fun and emotional. Make sure to find an awesome real estate agent who can help you find all of the possible options for your family.

Write out all of your wants and things that are deal breakers so that your agent can help find places that fit your requirements. I found that by making sure I was specific with requirements we were able to avoid checking out homes that we wouldn’t be interested in saving us a lot of time.

We were pretty flexible with our wants and needs. We knew we wanted 4-5 bedrooms, at least 2 baths, and a good sized yard for the kids. Everything else we kind of figured out as we went along. And in each home we visited we were vocal with our real estate agent about what we liked and didn’t like. And believe me… some of the homes we ran into we definitely couldn’t make work out.

Staying Within Your Budget

I cannot stress this enough. When going through the home buying process the one thing my husband and I never wanted to do was stretch our budget just to accommodate a new mortgage. We still want to be able to live a bit below our means so we don’t feel the stress of bills each month.

While some of the houses we saw just slightly outside of our budget were tempting, we made sure to stick to our guns and made an offer that was comfortable with our budget. Now I’m not saying it won’t be tight for a little bit as we adjust because it probably will be. And we’ll have to cut back on going out to eat as much. But we won’t be eating ramen each night… ok, maybe a few nights… but that’s just because the kids are obsessed.

Have you purchased a home? What are your smart home buying tips?