Not quite prepared

We are sitting in the kitchen of a lovely home in Murrieta. My client is taken by the upgrades all over the place. Granite counter-tops in the kitchen and the bathrooms. Tile floors throughout the downstairs. Nice carpet with a decidedly upgraded pad.

"We want this one," the wife boldly proclaims!

"Who are you qualified with?" (shame on me for not asking this question sooner), I ask.

"We haven't looked into financing yet," she says.

"Banks will not look at offers without a pre-qualification letter," I say.

"That is ok, we will call our lender today and get that ball rolling," he says.

We part company that day with a promise to chat the following day. I sit and wait as they confer with the mortgage officer. He requires documents in order to qualify them (bank statements, income verification, credit scores, etc...). It takes them all day to get those documents together.

The next day (day 3) they get all of the information to the lender. I get the pre-qual a little after noon. I was prepared and had the documents ready. I send the contracts and the pre-qual to the listing agent.

Now, we are both waiting. My phone rings off the hook...literally. I get calls every 3 hours from my clietns, wondering if there is any news. And of course there is not. I call the listing agent. Message after message is left, emails are left...NO RESPONSE! The listing agents are so busy that they do not care about good service.

Finally, on day 10 we get the call. "We accepted an offer 5-6 days ago," they say.

Two weeks have gone by, and somehow we are just barely to step 2. We sat in the kitchen of a beautiful home, unfortunately, we just weren't ready to buy.

I really want to buy a home...where do I start? pt. 1

I get asked this question a lot. My experience tells me that people have many different "places" to start. Here is my opinion of the home buying process...

1.) Pre-approval - this is the part that everyone dreads. You have to give very personal information to a complete stranger who then is going to tell you how much of a house you qualify to buy. The process is short and typically painless. You call a bank or a mortgage officer (by the way...I have plenty to refer you to if you don't know who to call), and tell them that you want to buy a house. They will ask for your income, credit information, etc...and tell you how much you can afford...usually folks decide how much they can afford by the payment.

2.) Get out and start looking - this is the fun part. You have an opportunity to view many homes (tons in fact...there are over 2,700 homes available in Corona, 1,000 in Lake Elsinore, 1,600 in Murrieta, and 1,300 in Temecula). The process can also become tedious and overwhelming because of the inventory. I recommend viewing 6-8 homes at a time...when you look at more than that...the homes tend to start blurring together (which house had the granite counter-tops, did this one have the slate kitchen, what did the loft look like in the house on Main St, etc...).