Hellobee Boards

@doxielove: congrats!!! You can get pre-approved at any time, but a pre-approval only lasts for a certain amount of time before it expires. And it requires a hard credit pull, which dings your credit, so you'll want to wait until you're really ready and looking. I would ask around for local recommendations for realtors, and use online tools to calculate what kind of mortgage you may qualify for and how much of a monthly payment you can reasonably afford. And lastly, use an online tool to start browsing homes. I use ziprealty, but zillow and redfin are others that people like.

I think a good place to start (once you have a really rough estimate of what your budget is) is to go to open houses. No realtor necessary, but it gives you an idea of what to expect in your price range, how much extra you could get at the top vs bottom of your range, etc. I wouldn't bother going to ones that are just way out of your price range but I think it's good to see a pretty broad range to help narrow down what you want or don't want.

I found a couple of realtors through friends, but neither was a good fit (one insisted I needed to ask my parents for $50K...the other was super unorganized)

I ended up finding the right fit by meeting a guy I saw advertised in a newspaper. He was incredibly helpful, and I appreciated that he didn't have me sign a letter of exclusivity until I was ready to submit an offer (the first realtor asked me to sign one at our first meeting)

I found it easy to work with the Realtor because he'd send me a list of suggestions for things to see the upcoming weekend, and I could tell him if I loved or hated any of them. And if I saw something on Redfin he hadn't noticed he would work it into the list.

I started working with him before I was preapproved. You don't have to have the approval to start looking, but sometimes at least starting to work with a lender will help you pinpoint what you can afford.

I second with @looch: says. We found our realtor by going to open houses and talking with realtors. We actually narrowed it down to three that we liked, and then met with them individually to hear about their process and see if we clicked with them. In the end, we found the house we ended up buying - not the realtor - but it was great to have a realtor that we enjoyed working with to make our way through all of the paperwork and negotiating and inspections.

I would suggest looking for homes yourself rather than relying on a realtor. You’ll always have the best knowledge about exactly what you are really looking for/what you like. I would use your state’s MLS listing service (free to search, don’t ever pay for it!), because that’s the central database of all listings, updated very regularly.

I don’t think there is any trick to finding a good realtor (none that I know of, at least!) although I agree with others who had said to go to open houses and meet with several realtors; there are sooooo many realtors out there, some are great, some are bad. One test I’ve found useful is to ask a prospective realtor if they would be willing/whether they ever call cold call homes not for sale to inquire if the seller is interested in selling. The good realtors are sales people and negotiators; they should be willing to think outside the box and be hungry for find you the home you want, whether it happens to currently be on the market or not.

To find a Realtor, we started going to open houses to see if there was anyone we meshed with. It was nice to see how they acted with potential buyers and also gave us an idea of where we wanted to live and the types of houses we liked.

We used a realtor we found when at an open house, we clicked with her and liked her, so we called to set up an appointment. I dont' regret it at all, she found us all sorts of houses and we were honest in what we wanted and she only showed up things she thought we would like and could afford. We did not tell her what we were approved for, only what our budget was (about 1/2 of what we were actually approved for.)

My suggestions are to have your own realtor, and not to use the listing agent. Their main focus is on the seller - not you! Ask friends or family for suggestions. Most people know a realtor they'd be happy to suggest. Our realtor actually suggested a mortgage company that offered some great options for our financial situation. A lot of agencies have close relationships with mortgage companies. We did a lot of searching online for homes, and then emailed our favorites to the realtor to set up showings. The seller pays the realtor's fees, so there is no downside to you having one - it will be a HUGE help when it comes to the paperwork and legal stuff!

Definitely ask friends who recently bought properties. Also ask about communication style and responsiveness - you want someone who will respond to you very quickly according to the mechanism you prefer (email vs phone).