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Condos Your Solution to Success

Every few years the housing market rewrites the rules, and buyers who learned the last set of rules show up unprepared for the new ones. Right now, the rules have changed more than they have at any point in a generation. The buyers who understand that are finding deals. The ones who do not are making expensive mistakes.

The arithmetic here is brutal and worth understanding clearly. A buyer who financed a $400,000 home at three percent in 2021 pays roughly $1,686 per month on principal and interest. That same loan at a seven percent rate costs $2,661. That gap of nearly a thousand dollars a month is why transaction volume has fallen to levels not seen in decades. Volume collapsed. Prices mostly did not.

Shantae is a name you might hear from a lot of agents right now, because the buyers getting deals done tend to treat the purchase like a business transaction rather than an emotional event. That is not a personality trait. It is a preparation habit.

Before you look at a single listing, get your pre-approval locked down. Not a rough estimate. Not a verbal confirmation from a loan officer you met once. A full pre-approval based on verified income, tax returns, bank statements, and a hard credit pull. In this market, a seller who receives an offer without that documentation will not take it seriously.

If the report surfaces significant deferred maintenance or structural issues, you have real choices, and walking away is a legitimate one of them. You can ask the seller to repair specific items before closing. Signing off on a failing roof or a bad HVAC system is not the same house you made an offer on.

Budget between two and five percent depending on your loan type and the state you are buying in. First-time buyers often do not see the full closing cost picture until the Closing Disclosure arrives three days before settlement. Ask your lender for a Loan Estimate with a realistic purchase price so the numbers reflect what you are actually going to face.

Real estate is illiquid. Buying and selling inside two years is almost always a money-losing proposition once you account for the full cost of both transactions. None of that means do not buy. It means be honest about your time horizon before you commit.

Buyers who take the time to prepare before they start looking tend to find that there are still good properties available at realistic prices. A quick look at up-to-date property listings will tell you more about your local market than most of what you read in national coverage.