Before getting your heart all tightly wrinkled up and squealing with excitement over houses you can't afford, start with getting pre-qualified. It's mostly a waste of time for everyone to go looking at places you "think" you can afford - aka - yeah right.
Those untouchables do eventually become helpful landmarks and parameters in recognizing a good deal. It might look as if my standards dropped. I am currently in escrow on a house located on a street I initially refused to even look at. How snooty of me! But, I think more than anything, I just really started to understand what was possible, what was clearly not within my budget, and then I started to see my options in metrics of potential.
So, I dont mean to say you shouldn't look outside your price range at all. I just mean that if you do, you better really be into the masochism of 24hour lightening love affairs and tsunami breakups - because every time you walk into the lusty, seductive, potential of an empty living room - try as you may - like siren songs - you will find yourself mentally moved-in and organizing the kitchenware...
- "and the sewing room will go there, and the 50's diner booth will go here, and I'll tear down these walls and build an addition out of shipping containers and vintage windows".
- Then you do the math, jolt out of your plush daydream - heartbroken and drowning in kleenex puffs. So, like I said: Get Pre-Qualified. Understand REALLY WELL what you can actually afford.
How do you get a Pre-Qual?
Well, you can walk into any bank and ask to get qualified by a lender. I kept thinking that I would then be married to working with whatever random suit I landed on, so I hesitated for a good while with getting qualified. Mistake. I understand now that you can just get qualified to get an idea of your financials. Then, as you move along in your search, you can look into different assistance programs, and each program will sort of push you to use particular lenders that are trained in their program deal. SO ... at that point you can switch to a lender that fits with the house or the program you are interested in.
For example, if you are looking in Oakland then you should check out this awesome city program:
City of Oaklands First time home buyers MAP Mortgage Assistance Program (www.oaklandnet.com/
It's a 2 day workshop to get certified. I went with Mele and it was actually very helpful for me in the early stages of grasping all the lingo.
If you qualify (ie: you make less than a certain $ - which I do) they give piggyback Deffered-Payment loans up to 20% or 75K. No payments until you sell, or rent, or after 30 years. fixed at 3%. Its an amazing program. It took me a while to actually translate all that bank-speak into english in my head, but i get it now, and so will you after a few.
I am actually not using the MAP program afterall - because the particular house I ended up bidding on was already tied to a Fanny Mae program that better suited my needs : extra loan money to cover the renovations.
http://www.fanniemae.com/homepath/incentive/index.jhtml
http://www.fanniemae.com/homepath/financing/index.jhtml
Anyway- my Rockin' Realtor, Andy Pitarre, held my hand through all of this...and pointed out many available deals and stuff, also helped connect me to the lenders I needed for my particular situation. So Yes! do your research! but also trust your Realtor!
If you don't trust your Realtor, you should call up mine!! he rules!
