Do Your Research Before You Buy

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Thanks for joining us today. As promised, we are going to continue with our series of five essential home buying tips. Today is all about tip number two: Do your research!

For those who know me and have worked with me in the past, this is very near and dear to my heart. Not all Realtors, or real estate brokerages, are created equally. For those who have not worked with one of us at Redline, I’ve come up with these three questions that you should use when you’re interviewing Realtors in order to find the best one for the job.

1. How has your business changed over the last few years?

The answer to this question will tell you a lot about your agent. Are they going to be asking a lot of questions in response, without answering yours? The industry has changed so much in the last 3-5 years, their answer should be “almost everything.” How we find homes, how we buy homes, and how transactions are completed have all changed. There is very little that remains the same.

2. What is your experience level?

The number of years someone has worked in a given field doesn’t always tell you what their experience level is. It’s all about what your Realtor is doing today. Have they worked with investors or invested in real estate themselves? The true experience comes from being out there and being involved. From being a fully-fledged Realtor as opposed to just a salesman. The more experience, the better.

3. How will we work together to help me find a home?

Is the agent simply going to tell you, “We’ll set you up with a home search and you let us know the ones you like.” If that is their only answer, just run. Your agent needs to be proactive in finding your home, whether it be by calling other agents to find listings, checking expired listings, or FSBO properties.

Of course, there are a lot of questions you should be asking a potential agent, but these are the three I wanted to share with you today. They will give you a clearer picture as to whether you’re hiring the right person or not. Next time, we’ll be back with tip number three! If you have any questions for us before then, give us a call or send us an email. We’re always here to help!

The First Thing to Do When Buying a Calgary Home

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Buying a home in any marketplace requires a careful plan, attention to detail, and a group of supporting team members to ensure your success. This is even more important in the current Calgary marketplace, so we’ve decided to put together 5 essential tips for you so that you are fully prepared to buy in Calgary today! We’ve got tip number one for you today: Get pre-approved.

Even today, it surprises me how many people are going out into the market looking at homes at price points that they’d love to be in but they haven’t even figured out if they can afford it. It’s important that you take a step back and go through the pre-approval process. When you’re out looking for a home to buy, you want to know exactly what you can afford so that you can speed through the process with ease.

A true pre-approval requires much more than a quick phone call. To make sure you’re fully pre-approved, you need a lender to look at all of your financial information, a fairly lengthy set of documents, so they can assess your situation. These are things like pay stubs and tax returns, which need to be filed and up-to-date. The “paperwork shuffle” as we like to call it isn’t a lot of fun, but it’s an important thing to go through. 

We suggest shopping for a mortgage through a broker rather than a bank, for a few different reasons. The broker is going to shop your financial situation across dozens of lenders to find your best rate and situation. Your bank will offer one set of services, and one set of rates. It only makes sense to do your due diligence, and see all the options available to you. 

There you have it, tip number one for being fully prepared to buy in the Calgary market. We’ll be back soon with steps two through five, keep an eye out for them! If you have any questions for us in the meantime, give us a call or send us an email. We would love to hear from you!