buy your haus

Determine your budget, and if financing, get pre-approved for a mortgage. Chatting with lenders can help us clearly understand what is manageable for you and your timeline.

• what are you comfortable spending monthly?

• how much do you have for a down payment + closing costs?

Once you have a specific property in mind, your lender can help you determine the amount of closing costs you’ll need. If you need help with closing costs, we can also ask that the seller pay for all or a portion of the closing costs!

I recommend chatting with 2 to 3 lenders/banks. Various lenders can offer different rates, services, and products. I have some rad local lenders I can introduce you to.

Pre-approvals are typically good for 90 days, which is a good amount of time to haus shop! From the time we get our offer accepted to when you’ll get keys is about 30 days!

Aside from your down payment + closing costs, you’ll also want to have some funds set aside for inspections and your home owner’s insurance. The lender will include an estimate for home owner’s insurance in your closing costs already, but know that you can shop around for this to decrease your cash out of pocket.

Throughout this process, it’s important to know that we’ll be communicating A LOT (basically family) for a month! I’ll likely be sending you several docs to sign throughout the process.

lenders we love:

• Steph Noble of Cross Country Mortgage — Queer + woman owned.

• Aneesah Rasheed of Evergreen Home Loans — Queer, BIPOC, + non-binary.

• Nikole Potulsky of Two Rivers Mortgage — Queer + woman owned.

• Clint Elliott of Do Good Mortgage — Ally.

important Qs to consider :

• where are you looking to live? What is too far north, south, east, + west?

• how many bedrooms + bathrooms? SQFT? Sometimes homes have bonus spaces that can provide you with the space you need.

• what is your target move in date? The process from when we get our offer accepted to when you get keys to your new place is about 30 days.

• are you open to living in both WA + OR? There is no income tax in Washington, so if you are self-employed or even work from home, this could be a huge advantage come tax season. (I’ll take a 10% raise!)

• what are your long-term real estate goals? are you planning on staying in this area? are you starting a family? interested in investment properties?

After we get our offer accepted, we assess the condition of the property during what is called the inspection contingency period.

I have go-to inspectors and contractors for just about everything. I will be responsible for scheduling the inspections within a timely manner.

Common inspections in the PNW include:

• General Home Inspection

• Sewer Scope

• Radon Test

• Oil Tank Locate (if necessary)

While radon and sewer inspections are pass/fail, a general home inspection is always a fail! This means there is always going to be issues that come up with any give property, including new construction.

While we won’t need to be on-site for the sewer scope, tank locate, and radon monitoring, I do welcome folks to join in for the end of the general home inspection. The home inspection is typically around 2.5-3.5 hours. It’s important to stay out of the inspector’s way, so that they can easily focus on their work. The inspector will let me know when they’re close to wrapping up, so that we can meet them on-site for an overview. This is a great opportunity for you to hear the major issues associated with the property, while also being able to ask the inspector any questions you may have. They are a great resource and should be treated as such in the years following homeownership. I still bug mine!

Inspection reports are typically emailed out same day/night and are generally 100-200 pages. That’s 100-200 pages showing you everything that is wrong with the property. I know it sounds scary, but we would rather know than not know.

The report is typically broken into 3 categories: immediate concerns, non-immediate concerns, and maintenance items. Once our inspection report is in, I can utilize that information to collect bids, often focusing on the major health, safety, and structural concerns of the property.

We’ll review those estimates from the pros and go through which items you’re willing to assume and which ones you’d like to ask the sellers to take care of.

A home warranty is a good option for your new investment. Home warranties are a great way to save money if something major happens with any of the major components of the home.

If we decide a property is not a good fit for you, we can back out for any reason during our inspection contingency period. If we back out during this period, your earnest money will be refunded to you.

There are 3 different ways to negotiate:

• have seller do repairs prior to close — “hey we want you to repair the sewer line + remove the mold from the attic prior to close.”

• price reduction — “the mold is $2,500 + the sewer repair is $5k. We want you to reduce the price by $7,500 to offset that cost.”

• issue concessions / asking for credit — “credit us $7,500 towards our closing costs and we’ll move forward.”

We can chat more about the impact of these three more. There is a maximum amount of concessions allowed depending on your loan type (if applicable). If the sellers are willing to meet us halfway on repairs, that’s usually a fair offer. If sellers are having the work completed prior to close, you may want to consider having a re-inspection to ensure the work was done correctly. You, as a buyer, are entitled to a final walk through of the property prior to closing as well.