Is the Pittsburgh Market currently a Buyer’s Market or a Neutral Market? If it is a Buyer’s market, with the $8K incentive now may be a great time to buy if you decide you can afford it.

I also would suggest you look into Open Houses. You don’t have to drag an agent along, and you can see what is out there in a price range you can afford in an area you like. You can join other lookie-loos on a Sunday, but your purpose is research. Our last outing we looked at well over 100 houses before we found what we wanted.

Use a Real Estate Attorney even if not required by state law, and even if you have a “buyer’s agent”. It looks like according to PA law, unless the you are paying the agent’s commission, the agent is working for the seller. So, rather then having a “buyer’s agent”, you have a “agent that brings the buyer”. This is a very important distinction as the less you tell the agent the better. Why? The agent would be required to inform the seller of anything that could benefit the seller in the transaction. The agent’s fiduciary duty is to the seller.
PA Code §35.336

Reconfirm this to make sure the code is current. And, if you have a buyer’s agent that you are paying, read the contract thoroughly and have your real estate attorney read it well too.

iVillage’s GardenWeb RE Forum has some very knowledgeable folks posting, as well as thousands of threads on buying and selling houses. Take some time to read about resale value as well as buying a house to fit your family’s needs. Sometimes the two do not mesh.

Best wishes on your journey.

If you qualify for a government loan, this is the way to go. Follow the link above!!

Debbi

Yes, there are hooks to the $8k. If you sell before 3 years, you do have to repay the money. We haven’t decided if we want to rent or buy just yet, but we are looking at both options to see which might be the best one for us. I am pretty risk averse myself, and even though that $8k is a lot of money, I’m not completely sure if it’s worth it.

1) I believe it is your agent that needs a copy of the pre-approval letter. there’s no need for the seller’s agent, much less the sellers, to know your approval limit. If something is on the table your agent’s assurance that you have been pre-approved for that amount should be enough to the other agent.
2) I was a first home buyer once too and I know the excitement of finally owning your own home and making it your own. Unless you are ready to buy fairly soon talking to an agent could almost be jumping the gun. I say this because two things may happen: a) when you mention you are looking to buy in a few months or so, agent will be discouraged. h ewants to make his commission NOW not in a few months. As a result he may not take you so seriourly yet. b) he may decide to move up YOUR time table to fit HIS. he may be aggressive and push towards lots of showings to get you to buy a house NOW so he can get his commission.
3) You are very smart to have the next buyer in mind. Always do this and try not to fall in love with home that are “almost” perfect but have that one off the wall characteristic. Chances are you won’t be in that home forever and what was “cute” to you may not be to others.

Good luck!

Mercedes

The two lenders I spoke with today said we could qualify for a lot more than what I was asking. I didn’t ask how much, and I don’t want to know. I know how much we can comfortably afford, and that’s how much I’m pursuing. Anything higher, and we won’t be able to meet our other goals. I wanna go on vacation someday, ya know?

@Meredith, I agree, I was a bit surprised with the transcript request. Oh well, it’ll be good to have a copy on hand for whenever we may need it again. The second lender I spoke with only wanted to see the last pay stub. Much easier.

Here’s a tip: When we got a pre-approval letter, the mortgage broker guy asked what price range we were looking in, and put the top of the range on the letter. This was good for a couple reasons:

- We didn’t know the “upper limit” that we could be approved for. We were shopping well within our budget, and if a preapproval letter had the “28% of our income” (that we could still, technically, afford and get approved for, but would prefer not to spend) it may have made our “upper limit” creep up with the thought “well, if they’ll approve us for it, maybe we can afford more…” We were looking out for our own budget, so not even knowing the upper limit helped us stick to our much lower, self-imposed one.

- Sellers didn’t know our true “upper limit”. If they’re selling a house for, say, $150,000, and we offer $140k, but our preapproval letter says we can afford much more, they have no reason to negotiate (because they know we can afford the asking price). If they want to sell the house, and know we can get approved for JUST our offer, though, they’re more likely to come down out of motivation to sell.