The 10 smartest things I did before I bought my first house by Christopher Curley on Aug 1, 2018, 11:27 AM Advertisement
 - Buying a house is one of the most expensive purchases you make.
- There are some things you can do before buying a house that can save you money, time, and stress during the moving process.
- Here are the 10 smartest things I did before buying my first house.
In the early fall of 2017, my wife and I received a notice from our landlord that we'd been anticipating for over a year. Our two-year lease was transforming into a month-to-month affair. We would have to move so he could renovate and convert our apartment to an Airbnb. We were faced with a tough choice: Continue to rent in New Orleans, a city we'd made our home since 2011, but was experiencing an increasingly hostile rental market, or take the leap into homeownership. Whatever we decided, it had to be fast. The letter gave us three months. So I dialed back my freelance work and made it my part-time job to learn as much about buying a house as possible. We closed in January of 2018 — just in the nick of time. Here are a few of the smartest things I did before buying my first home: SEE ALSO: 5 mistakes we made when we bought our first house 1. I crunched the numbers to make sure buying made sense  Contrary to some common misconceptions, my generation (millennials) has been driving a recent increase in homeownership, according to research from The Census Homeownership and Vacancy Survey, reported by Trulia. But it is true we are waiting longer to take the house-buying leap, researchers from First American Financial Corp found. My wife and I were fine with being lifelong renters as long as it made financial sense. But did it? In order to find out, we plugged all of our relevant numbers into a Rent vs. Buy calculator. The results were clear. If we intended to stay in New Orleans for more than a couple of years and could afford to buy now, then it would benefit us financially. That decided it; we were going to at least try to buy.
2. We hired a buyer's agent  I'm a reasonably intelligent person, but it would be the height of hubris to think that I could understand the ins and outs of homebuying better than an expert — especially on the first go-round. So we hired a buyer's agent. A buyer's agent is a realtor who acts on behalf of the person buying a home. Our agent helped us find our home, negotiate with the seller, choose from a list of trusted inspectors, and generally advocated on our behalf.
3. We didn't get a mortgage broker  At a glance, getting a mortgage broker — a person who will hunt for the best rates for you from various lenders — makes perfect sense. Using a mortgage broker can save you the time and effort of researching lenders and sometimes can save you some fees, according to Investopedia. But there can be drawbacks. Brokers have to get paid, after all, and that's either by charging the buyer, the seller, or the lender about 1% of the mortgage amount, according to Realtor.com. And guess what? Working on commission from lenders means not working solely for you.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
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