Buying Season

Buying Season
Real Estate around Seattle

Residential real remains a highly personal business. Your taste, likes and dislikes, cultural preferences, and personality matter. Virtual reality is no substitute for the real thing. Exploring a home from room to room and up and down the stairs is still essential.

What looked like a spacious living room online, in reality, accommodates only two armchairs. While the expansive master suite impressed, it was large only at the expense of the other two bedrooms. Often, buyers like the downstairs but not the upstairs or the reverse.

Technology Matters

Technology continues to transform the home buying process. It helps to find homes and to identify the homes worth a visit. It helps us to estimate the value of a home.  Technology changes the way we make offers and how we conduct the transaction all the way to the closing day.

While technology is an important driver, it is not the decider. Two buyers, equipped with the same online-acquired information will feel differently about the same home. Both will step into the home armed with the same information, but only one will consider buying the home.

A Personal Matter

If at all possible, we will first meet face to face. It helps to like your real estate agent. You should like the person who will send you lots of emails and text messages. The better we know each other, the less is the chance for misunderstandings.

If you need to finance the home purchase, you should meet that person before you meet with me. Before looking at homes, you should know what you can afford.
Mortgage rates fell more in the past week than they have in any one-week period in more than a decade. The average 30-year fixed loan has dropped 22 basis points to 4.06%, while 15-year fixed loans are down 14 basis points to 3.57%. This should make this a successful buying season

A Matter of Style

Once we’ve established the criteria of your home, I set up an automatic search. You’ll receive notifications of new homes the second they come on the market. You can search yourself online anywhere you like including SERENE, my website for home buyers. For the favorite homes you’ve found online, I perform in-depth research. If necessary, I will preview some to save you time on the road.

When we tour a home, I listen to your comments and watch your reactions. A note of caution: home sellers are not permitted to record your voice, but their cameras may tape your every move. My job is to protect your interests all the way to closing. That’s why I will not let you buy a home that I would not want to list.

Forms That Matter

I will take the time to explain the multitude of forms. Once you make an offer, I want you to feel comfortable when signing them. When a transaction gets hectic, I want you to be at ease. I encourage questions.

The process begins online, but it ends in a real place, your new home. My job is to get you safely from one to the other. If you are a Seattle area home buyer, see how to get there, step by step.

First published by Gerhard as his
March 2019 View from the Street Newsletter.
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