From Dream to Doorstep: Your Ultimate Homebuying Game Plan (Part 1

Ready to unlock the secrets to successful homebuying? 🏡 In part one of our two-part "Did You Know" series on Mortgage, Markets, and More, Peter D'Angelo breaks down the essential first steps — from setting your budget and boosting your credit, to securing pre-approval and finding your perfect agent. We’ll also explore smart house-hunting strategies that make the process less stressful and more exciting! 🚪💼

Whether you're a first-time buyer or just need a refresher, this episode is packed with actionable tips to help you move confidently from dreaming about your next home to turning the key in the front door. Stay tuned for part two, where we tackle making offers, inspections, and closing day!

#HomeBuyingJourney #MortgageTips #FirstTimeHomebuyer #RealEstateAdvice #FinancialFreedom #HomeownershipGoals #MarketInsights

Watch this episode on Youtube!

Interested in getting Pre-Approved? Submit your Pre-Approval inquiry here!
Interested in your Refinance options? Submit your Refinance inquiry here!

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Peter D'Angelo | NMLS: 885309 | Branch Manager | Guaranteed Rate, Inc., NMLS 2611
Peter.DAngelo@Rate.com

*All information, topics, discussion is my own personal opinion and insight, not reflective of Guaranteed Rate, Inc. May contain market information for informational purposes only, not to be used as financial advice.

Transcript

LINK: https://share.descript.com/view/jfy7zjuKr2l 

Did You Know? | The Homebuying Process: From Dream to Keys (Part 1 of 2)

1. Introduction (30–45 seconds)

• Quick welcome and preview:

"Today, we’re diving into the exciting — and sometimes overwhelming — process of buying a home. Whether you're a first-timer or just need a refresher, this two-part series will walk you through everything from pre-approval to moving in. Let’s start at the very beginning: getting ready to buy!"

2. Step 1: Financial Preparation (1–2 minutes)

• Budgeting:
   
  • Know how much you can realistically afford (mortgage calculators are a good starting point).
•  
  • Don’t forget about extra costs: down payment, closing costs, moving, maintenance.
•  
• Credit Readiness:
   
  • Higher credit scores = better rates.
•  
  • Tips for improving scores: pay down debt, avoid big purchases, check credit reports early.
•  

3. Step 2: Getting Pre-Approved (1–2 minutes)

• Pre-Qualification vs. Pre-Approval:
   
  • Pre-qualification = a quick estimate.
•  
  • Pre-approval = a real offer backed by a lender, much stronger.
•  
• Documents You’ll Need:
   
  • Pay stubs, W-2s, tax returns, bank statements, ID.
•  
• Why Pre-Approval Matters:
   
  • It shows sellers you're serious.
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  • It sets your true price range.
•  

4. Step 3: Finding the Right Agent (1 minute)

• Why Use a Buyer’s Agent:
   
  • Their commission is usually paid by the seller.
•  
  • They advocate for you and help navigate contracts, negotiations, and inspections.
•  
• Qualities to Look For:
   
  • Experience in your market, good communication, and a solid track record.
•  

5. Step 4: House Hunting (1–2 minutes)

• Prioritizing Needs vs. Wants:
   
  • Focus on location, price, condition, and major features first.
•  
• Using Online Tools Smartly:
   
  • Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com — but double-check listing accuracy with your agent.
•  
• Open Houses vs. Private Showings:
   
  • Both offer different insights — private showings can be more revealing.
•  

Transcript:

📍  📍   

 Welcome back to Mortgage Markets and More. I'm your host, Peter D'Angelo from Rate. I hope you're doing well. I'm excited for today's episode, which is going to be part one of a two part series for our did You Know Segments All about the home buying process. We're going to take a look at the home buying process from the moment you decide you'd like to buy a home all the way through up until after closing.

We talk about the parts of the process a lot, and I wanna start putting those pieces together for you so you can have a nice overview. We're gonna do it across two episodes so we can get into detail and then in the future. I'm going to do one abridged episode that hits the highlight reels for us, so that you'll have one resource to go to to kind of review your whole home buying process and what you can expect for that experience at the onset.

This is going to be a great episode to share with anybody that you've talked to that's possibly interested in buying a home or if they own a home and are interested in possibly selling. This is going to be a good refresher going through all the steps of the process. 

So we're going to start off with the most important first step after you decide that you'd like to buy a home. And I talk about it on almost every episode when we talk about mortgage rates. We talk about getting started in the process, get pre-approved. The first step, you're going to want to get your numbers in order, and that's where I come in.

That's where a mortgage advisor comes in. You can reach out to one. You're going to start that process by completing an application. It's going to ask you for your information. Then at the end of that application process, that's where you're going to start to provide some documents.  Last episode on, did you know we talked about  preapproval versus prequalification?

Well, we're going to actually talk about this in the context of getting pre-approved, which is what you're going to really want to do, so that one, you know that everything's fully verified with your mortgage advisor so that you don't have any concerns about possible issues with your financing later.

It will give sellers more confidence in selecting your offer, knowing that you've been pre-approved. And again, I like to just mention here at RE we actually do an approval process for our buyers. So it is even possible to get your mortgage fully approved, even a step further than that pre-approval.

Now, in this process, you're going to provide some documents to verify the information on your application. Things like pay stubs, w twos. Possibly tax returns if you own property already, if you don't own other property, but you may have a requirement to provide your tax returns if you're self-employed, if you claim income on your Schedule C or if you have businesses that you own that.

Will also require possibly providing business tax returns. So these are the main documents, and we'll talk about this as if you're a first time home buyer. So first time home buyers, you don't own any, any other property. So tax returns would be required if you have businesses that you own, or like I mentioned, you're just gonna be providing pay stubs and W twos.

That's for the income side of the equation. What's our next qualification factor? Credit. In your application experience, we're going to wind up pulling either a soft pull on your credit like we have in our system, and some lenders just have a hard credit inquiry main difference between the two. A hard credit inquiry will impact your credit scores.

It is a bonafide inquiry and it can negatively impact you depending on how many times you've had your credit run with a hard credit inquiry in the past, you know, let's say six to seven months.  Soft credit inquiry doesn't have an impact on your credit score. If you have credit monitoring through some consumer facing platform, maybe your bank has credit monitoring, a soft credit pull could still pop up on that credit monitoring, but that doesn't mean it's a hard pull. 

It's still a soft pull. It's just letting you know that your credit was at least soft checked.  Then the next qualification aspect, assets, that's where we're going to ask you for bank statements. If you have a retirement account, we use that for reserves that can help bolster your qualifications and stocks, bonds.

If you own any of these other types of assets, this is where we verify them. So you'll provide statements. Commonly we look for the last 60 days worth. So the prior two months is what we look for. We at rate actually offer an automated platform for that. So you can log into your banking and there's other mortgage companies that offer this too.

You can log into your banking online, and it automatically verifies your assets in a one-way secured connection so that it could alleviate some of the paperwork. As you'll notice when we talk about this process, it. Is a document heavy process. So any opportunity we have to mitigate that, you're going to want to take advantage.

So the same thing applies for your income. I know we talked about the W twos and pay stubs. We offer an automated platform. Some employers, depending on your payroll provider at your company, some employers are available to have an automated income verification. That provides a great benefit for you if you can verify your assets and your income through automated means and automated platforms.

So these are just a couple things that could be available to you when you're going through this pre-approval phase. So we've covered income, credit, assets. Now the other element is property. So we're gonna have to take a look at what a proposed property would look like when you complete your application.

You're going to put a number on there of what. Price home, and if you're not sure, that's okay. The mortgage application process is just to start. We will adjust that on our end after we have conversation with you and understand what your goals are when you're looking for a home, as well as what your budget is.

So you can put any number you like in there that you're going to be applying for.  We are going to take care of some more of the property specific items when we have your application, but now, once all this is done, those are the documents that we customarily look for so that we can have. A pre-approval conversation, which is everything verified.

That is the next step of the process. You've provided your application, you've provided the documentation. Now we're having a conversation to confirm the information we have. So we'll have a conversation about that, and then we're moving on to now the fun part.

Looking at homes. So in this pre-approval process, the next step that I like to take is do a case study. So the next thing that we're going to do is we're going to look at the market that you may be interested in purchasing, and we're gonna take a look at what's available right now, what homes are commonly selling for.

And then we're going to just kind of do a little case study and say, okay, well if you're interested in purchasing in this town, we're going to take a look at a home that's around the price that we've identified here that works for your budget and what that looks like. And what I think is very helpful is that gets you to contextualize the numbers.

With the home, so you can see, oh, this is what the home looks like. If you go to the open house and you walk through it, you see the home, and then you also have the numbers to kind of connect with that. And then when you go into other homes, that gives you good reference point. So that's what we'll do in that part of the process.

You have an understanding of your budget, you have an understanding of the numbers. We're gonna go through the down payment amount, your closing costs, your prepaids, what the total out of pocket cost is going to be, things that you can expect to pay for prior to closing, and things that you can expect to pay for at closing. 

All of that gets accomplished in this pre-approval process, and then you are fully pre-approved. Now we get to move on to the next phase. If you didn't have one already.  Now is the time where you're going to wanna find a reliable local realtor. They are going to be your best.  Possible opportunity for success in this market.

They are going to help walk you through the process. They're going to get to understand what your needs are for the home, and they're going to do their due diligence to find the right opportunities for you. 

Their negotiation tactics, they're going to discuss with them what their insight is in the market. That's your opportunity to ask about what things are selling for. Maybe the town that you're interested in is not maybe the right one and a local realtor is going to be able to guide you in the right direction for which is going to be the right place to shop for your needs at your budget. 

Once you have all that done, now you go into the house hunting phase. Your job with your mortgage advisor's not over, and that communication continues to happen, and it should be happening at a high level as you're going out to see homes rely on your mortgage advisor to understand those properties.

You're going to see a home or maybe you're scheduled to go to an open house.  That's the perfect opportunity to loop in your mortgage advisor and you know, you could reach out and be like, Hey Pete, we're going to see, 1, 2, 3 Main Street this Saturday. We're thinking that if we really like it, numbers are going to be here.

Could you let us know what that looked like? Absolutely. In a couple minutes, I can send you over a summary of what the down payment, closing cost, interest rate, monthly payment, everything would look like. So when you go in to see that home, you have a good idea of the numbers. Then you can also understand, well, if we really want to get aggressive here,  this is what we can offer because you already know what your numbers are. 

The other thing. To to note in the home shopping phase, your realtor primary number one, they are going to be your champion and also be the person who is going to be your guru and guide to the market that you're interested in shopping in. But if you'd like to look online and inform yourself more, there's a number of different tools available.

There's Zillow, redfin realtor.com. I, myself am a little bit partial to realtor.com. I think they've done a great job and.  Updating their user experience and what that platform looks like. And there's some also really cool tools in there. A lot of times the taxes are available, so you can see that. I just find that there's more easily displayed information and better organized information there. 

This is not a paid sponsorship. This is just my personal opinion on what I actually use, most often when I'm assisting clients. The other thing I wanted to mention in the home shopping phase before we wrap up this first part.  There is a difference between open houses and private showings.

So an open house is a pre-scheduled time period that anyone can enter the property to check it out, ask questions, possibly to the listing agent. But it's important to note, especially in the current climate, that the listing agent that is present at that open house is representing the seller.  Their obligation is to serve the seller  unless.

You are signed with them also to represent you as a buyer. If you're just walking into an open house and you don't know that real estate agent, just know that they are representing the seller. That's an important distinction to make  when you go to that open house. You'll let them know who you're working with.

You're gonna let them know your realtor, and then you're gonna go check it out. You can ask some questions, you can review the listing Sometimes, most of the time, actually, they always have this here in New Jersey, the seller's disclosures out there. And the seller's disclosure is an important document. I wanted to highlight when you're going to an open house.

That is the seller's te attesting to everything about the property that they're aware of. So that's a really good document to review When you go in there. It'll talk about if they're aware of any issues in the property, if they found any problems. It'll tell you the dates that things have been updated.

All of that's there on the seller disclosure. Very important document, good one to check out, especially when you're at open houses.  As far as private showings, that's where you're going to reach out to your real estate agent.  And your realtor's going to reach out to the listing agent of a property you're interested in and schedule a time for just you to go see that property.

Your realtor will be there with you. Sometimes the listing agent will be there, sometimes not. But your realtor will definitely be there to walk you through that property, answer any questions that you have, and they can also give you some insight on that local market, what things are selling for, and if they have any other experience working in that neighborhood or in that town. 

That's where we're going to end things today. A little bit of a cliffhanger. So now we've gone through the pre-approval process, we've gotten out shopping, and we're going to look forward to the next phase, which is we're gonna kick things off on the next part  📍 with offer acceptance, so stay tuned for more.

That will be our next, did you know segment? I hope you're finding this helpful and useful. Please like, share, subscribe. If you have any questions or anything that I went through that you'd like to dive a little deeper on my contact information is in the episode description.

Would love to help and answer any of your questions.  In the meantime, I hope you all have a great day and take good care.