Whether you’re ready to settle into your first home or looking to buy your fifth; are moving cross-country or cross-town, it’s smart to identify which attributes of a new home are most important to you.

Be sure to sit down with your real estate agent and discuss your needs and wants for your new house.

Here are five topics to think about when buying a home:

What You Can’t Live Without

Our lifestyle choices are often reflected in the homes we buy. Are you a motorcycle fanatic? If so, a roomy garage would be important to you. Have a big family? You’ll likely need to buy a home with at least four bedrooms. Perhaps you or your spouse is a gourmet cook. In that case, a well-designed kitchen could be a must for you. Before your real estate agent begins a home buying search for you, he or she will want to know which home attributes you can’t live without.

Schools and Family Needs

The quality of school systems has long been of importance to home-buying families. If you have children or are thinking about having children in your new home, you’ll want to discuss school information and statistics with your real estate agent. Not only is it important to consider the location of your home relative to area schools, but you’ll also want to think about the quality and diversity of local school offerings. Your real estate agent can provide statistics and information about both public and private schools in all the neighborhoods in which you’re considering buying a home.

Commuting

For many people, commuting from home to work and back is a necessary evil. A long commute can detract from a home-buyer’s quality of life and the time he or she gets to spend at home. Commuting should be a critical factor in home selection, because in many communities, traffic backups are increasingly common. And today, this phenomenon applies to urban, suburban and even rural areas. If having little or no commute to work is important to you, convey this to your real estate agent.

Community Details

Whether you hope to live in a vibrant urban neighborhood, or a charming rural town, the demographics, details and community statistics of a particular area are almost as important a consideration when buying a home as the details of the house itself. Do you want to live in the thick of the action? Prefer to get away from it all? If a particular aspect of a community is important to you-like a defined downtown area, or a strong recreation component-be sure to tell your real estate agent so that he or she can gather community information and keep this consideration at the forefront of your home search.

Budget

Of course, the most rigid constraint of a home-buying search is typically the buyer’s budget. Defining budget parameters quickly and early focuses a home search to a particular segment of the market. However, with the creative lending solutions available today, budget constraints are not as rigid as they once were or as many home-buyers assume them to be. Many innovative mortgage options are now available to both first-time and veteran home-buyers. Before beginning a home search, you should talk to both your real estate agent and your lender about your finance options and ultimately, your budget.

Contact Malcolm Bellinger at 250-215-1414 for more information.

Understanding the Related Costs of Home Buying

According to Will Rogers, property is a great investment because nobody’s making any more. That is as true today as it was in the early 1900s when Will Rogers made the statement. Today, however, you’ll need to think about more than a mortgage payment to determine if you can afford a home. To assure you are purchasing a home within the confines of your budget, you must consider closing costs as well. How much can you afford? Coldwell Banker® professionals provide some insight.

First calculate the estimated mortgage payment

Several formulas exist to help determine how much a lender will allow a consumer to borrow. One of the more accurate formulas is a front- and back-end ratio. It states that the buyer can afford as much as 28 percent of his or her gross-monthly income toward the monthly mortgage payment, assuming that the consumer’s other debt payments(credit cards, car loans, student loans, etc…) are less than or equal to 8 percent of his or her gross-monthly income.

To better understand this formula, assume a gross-family income of $5,000 a month. The front-end ratio or maximum monthly mortgage payment is (28 percent of $5,000) $1,400. The back-end ratio is (8 percent of $5,000) $400. Therefore, the buyer can afford a $1,400.00 monthly mortgage payment as long as monthly debt payments are less than or equal to $400. If debt payments exceed the back-end ratio, it will reduce the monthly mortgage payment dollar for dollar. For example, if debt payments are $500, the maximum monthly mortgage payment a person could afford would be reduced to $1,300.

The Coldwell Banker® award-winning Web site, www.coldwellbanker.com, provides other calculators and tools to help consumers better understand the mortgage process, including a mortgage calculator which allows consumers to project monthly mortgage payments.

Down Payment and Closing Costs

These terms refer to how much money the buyer will have to pay out of pocket and up-front to purchase a home. Down payment is simple; it refers to the amount of money the buyers needs to invest at closing toward the price of the home. Most lenders request a down payment of at least 20 percent of the cost. For first-time homebuyers, this may be difficult to achieve. Several programs are available and relatively easy to qualify for that allow buyers to make down payments of as little as 3 percent of the price of the home. Consumers can evaluate their options with the Coldwell Banker® Mortgage program or their lender.

Closing costs vary from Province-to-Province, city-to-city and even from home-to-home. Closing costs can include attorney fees, home inspection costs, title search fees, bank fees, termite inspection fees and radon inspection fees, to name a few. The mortgage lender requires some of these services and others are legally necessary depending on where the buyer lives. To better understand the necessary closing costs in the area they are looking to buy in, consumers can contact their local Coldwell Banker office. For the sake of estimating, closing costs can range from 1 to 5 percent or more of the value of the home.

While up-front costs are more than one would pay for renting, homeownership can still be a sound investment and certainly an emotionally rewarding experience. After all, a cozy home and a piece of land to call your own are as much a part of the Canadian landscape as Neil Diamond is.

Whether you’re ready to settle into your first home or looking to buy your fifth; are moving cross-country or cross-town, it’s smart to identify which attributes of a new home are most important to you.

Be sure to sit down with your real estate agent and discuss your needs and wants for your new house.

Here are five topics to think about when buying a home:

What You Can’t Live Without

Our lifestyle choices are often reflected in the homes we buy. Are you a motorcycle fanatic? If so, a roomy garage would be important to you. Have a big family? You’ll likely need to buy a home with at least four bedrooms. Perhaps you or your spouse is a gourmet cook. In that case, a well-designed kitchen could be a must for you. Before your real estate agent begins a home buying search for you, he or she will want to know which home attributes you can’t live without.

Schools and Family Needs

The quality of school systems has long been of importance to home-buying families. If you have children or are thinking about having children in your new home, you’ll want to discuss school information and statistics with your real estate agent. Not only is it important to consider the location of your home relative to area schools, but you’ll also want to think about the quality and diversity of local school offerings. Your real estate agent can provide statistics and information about both public and private schools in all the neighborhoods in which you’re considering buying a home.

Commuting

For many people, commuting from home to work and back is a necessary evil. A long commute can detract from a home-buyer’s quality of life and the time he or she gets to spend at home. Commuting should be a critical factor in home selection, because in many communities, traffic backups are increasingly common. And today, this phenomenon applies to urban, suburban and even rural areas. If having little or no commute to work is important to you, convey this to your real estate agent.

Community Details

Whether you hope to live in a vibrant urban neighborhood, or a charming rural town, the demographics, details and community statistics of a particular area are almost as important a consideration when buying a home as the details of the house itself. Do you want to live in the thick of the action? Prefer to get away from it all? If a particular aspect of a community is important to you-like a defined downtown area, or a strong recreation component-be sure to tell your real estate agent so that he or she can gather community information and keep this consideration at the forefront of your home search.

Budget

Of course, the most rigid constraint of a home-buying search is typically the buyer’s budget. Defining budget parameters quickly and early focuses a home search to a particular segment of the market. However, with the creative lending solutions available today, budget constraints are not as rigid as they once were or as many home-buyers assume them to be. Many innovative mortgage options are now available to both first-time and veteran home-buyers. Before beginning a home search, you should talk to both your real estate agent and your lender about your finance options and ultimately, your budget.

Coldwell Banker Affiliates of CanadaTM are committed to help you acquire the property that is right for you. We will provide you with Ultimate Service® as detailed in the following 20 Point Buyer Services Guarantee. We listen to what’s important to you. Together we’ll develop a customized service plan that reflects your specific needs.

We guarantee our service standards in writing. The Buyer Services Guarantee™ means consistent, predictable, reliable performance – guaranteed!

•  Buyer Counselling Session. We will conduct a buyer counselling session to discuss your needs and goals, and to plan the search for your property.

•  Buyer Agency Alternatives. We will discuss alternatives for agency representation that are available to you as a potential buyer – Buyer Brokerage, Seller Agency and Disclosed Dual Agency – and our representation of your customer interests in the different agency relationships.

•  Buyer Representation Agreement. We will present and explain to you the buyer representation agreement and the special services and benefits it offers.

•  Home Buying Process. We will explain the entire home buying process to you in advance and guide you through every step along the way.

•  Financial Pre-qualification. We will offer to arrange a pre-qualification or pre-approval appointment with a reputable lender to identify your range of affordability and to increase your negotiating strength.

•  Coldwell Banker Team Search. We will present your property search criteria to the Coldwell Banker sales team. Our goal is to present you, when possible, with properties as they debut or before they appear on the open market.

•  Property Showing. We will show you properties that meet the criteria you have selected.

•  Property Evaluation. We will discuss features of a property that may affect its value and future resale.

•  Property Disclosure. We will review with you all inspection reports and other documents pertaining to the condition of the property, and answer all questions regarding physical defects of the property which are known to us.

•  Review of Written Seller Disclosure. We will thoroughly review with you any seller’s written disclosure statement to enable you to accept or specify the remedy for each fault disclosed. Remedies for any disclosed faults should be addressed in the offer to purchase.

•  Appraisal Contingency/Condition. We will explain to you the option of an appraisal contingency.*

•  Home Warranty.We will explain to you the option of a home warranty plan to reduce your risk of repair when purchasing a property.

•  Property Inspections. We will recommend that you obtain a professional property inspection to address basic construction issues.*

•  Estimate of Funds Required. We will provide you with a preliminary estimate of closing costs and down payment requirement anticipated in the transaction.

•  Offer Preparation. We will prepare a written offer on the property you choose to purchase, with terms and conditions approved by you.

•  Property Inspection Remedies. We will request in the offer to purchase that the seller remedy the items you specify after your review of the property inspection reports.

•  Negotiation Strategy. A key role in any purchase, we’re effective negotiators who will work hard to develop a strategy to deliver terms and conditions acceptable to you.

•  Offer Presentation. We will endeavour to present your purchase offer directly to the seller in the presence of the listing representative.

•  Walk-through. We will accompany you on a thorough walk-through of the property (if one is provided for in the sales contract) before closing, and we will assist you in dealing with any problems discovered during the walk-through.

•  Closing the Sale. We will monitor and inform you of the progress of the purchase agreement, including the satisfaction of all contingencies and conditions during the entire transaction.

•  After-Sale Service. We will contact you after the closing to follow up on remaining details or service needs.

•  Service Satisfaction Survey. We will provide you with a confidential opportunity to give an evaluation of our services.

*Some Buyer Services are appropriate only when a Buyer Representation Agreement is in place.