Selecting a Home

Now the fun part begins! It is time to begin thinking about what your dream house might look like. Decide which features are most important to you in a home and then you can begin house hunting in earnest.

Working with a Real Estate Agent
Before you begin looking at houses in a serious way, you will probably want to enlist the services of a real estate agent. An agent can help you find homes in your price range with features you want. A real estate agent will also have experience with the financial and legal details of the home buying process that will be helpful to you.

The relationship between a home buyer and real estate agent is unusual in that the buyer pays nothing for the agent's services. Instead agents are paid by the seller, usually as a commission based on the sales price of the home. The agent really represents the seller's interest in the transaction.  You can hire an agent to act as your agent, but be sure to determine how this person will be paid, before you begin house hunting with them. 

You may find an agent by getting recommendations from friends and relatives or by using the "Realtor" search button at the top left of this page. Realtors are also shown on pages featuring individual houses using the "Listings" button.

What Do You Want in a Home?
Now you will need to begin to organize your thoughts about your new home into lists of priorities. For a start, consider how important neighborhood, size and special features like air conditioning, porch, garage, laundry facilities, etc. are to you. It will help you to remember your top priority as you house hunt and it will help you realtor assemble a list of homes to show you if you are clear about your wishes.

You can go to open houses in the neighborhoods you are interested in to get a better sense of what you will get for your money in particular neighborhoods. Open houses are listed in the newspaper each Saturday and can be searched by neighborhood on this website.

Go to the Listings Page 
The home page of this site is connected to the Multiple Listing Service database of City of Rochester homes for sale. You can enter search choices and look at homes currently for sale in different parts of the city. Each home's page can show you information about the home, its location and the real estate agent who has the listing.

Go to the Neighborhoods Page
Learn more about Rochester's active, vibrant neighborhoods as you navigate from this page. Be sure to notice whether or not neighborhoods you are interested in have neighborhood associations. These groups can help new residents learn about services in their neighborhood and can also be powerful advocates for residents' issues with local governments and agencies.

When you have narrowed your search to a few neighborhoods, it can be really valuable to just drive or walk around the neighborhoods and look for For Sale signs.

Submitting a Purchase Offer
House hunters look at an average of 15 houses before making an offer on one. When you feel you have done enough comparison shopping to know what you want and what you can afford, you can let your agent know that you are ready to make an offer. You will need to consider several factors when deciding on the size of your offer.

Ask the seller's agent if there is a CMA (comparative market analysis)
This will tell you what other houses of similar size sold for recently in that neighborhood. A CMA helps you determine the market value of the house.

Understand the physical and structural condition of the house
Your offer will be contingent on a professional home inspection, but you still need to have a good idea of the home's condition at this point.  Any major problems will affect how much you should offer. The seller and his agent are both legally bound to tell you of any defects in the house that they know of.

You should be aware of the seller's position
If, for instance, the seller has a contract on another house that is contingent on the sale of this one, he will be pretty anxious to sell. You should definitely consider this when deciding what to offer.

Stay within your price limits
Be careful not to get carried away by your enthusiasm for a house and offer more than you can afford. A lender will not give you a mortgage if you offer more than you can afford. Even if you are within the lender's limits, be sure you do not go above the amount you have decided you are comfortable spending on housing every month. Let it go, there are more good houses out there.

You can ask the seller to help with closing costs
Instead of talking the seller down on the asking price, it may be worth it to you to ask for the seller to pay some of the closing costs.

Your real estate agent will be able to help with determining a good offer price. Remember, though, that unless you have made other arrangements, the agent works for the seller and makes more money if the house sells for more.

You submit the offer to the real estate agent on a signed form called a "purchase and sale agreement". The agent can help you fill out this form and will deliver it to the seller along with your "earnest money". Earnest money is essentially a deposit toward your down payment. Once the seller has signed the agreement, the detailed negotiations that will produce the formal sales contact begin.


Step 6 - Shopping for a Mortgage