When you’re wondering how to save money for a house, it can start to feel like you’ll never scrape together enough for a down payment.
Yeah, you already know that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Well, the same holds true for building a down payment. It takes time! Read more
Wondering how to improve your credit score? Sure, it’s easy to fall in love with the idea of buying a home. You’ve got it all planned out: a five-bedroom home in your favorite neighborhood with a manicured lawn and—why not?—a nice pool.
But if you’re going to get a mortgage (and let’s face it, most homebuyers do), you’ll likely need to improve your credit score, also called a FICO score—a simplified calculation of your history of paying back debts and making regular payments on loans. If you’re borrowing money to buy a home, lenders want to know you’ll pay them back in a timely manner, and a credit score is an easy estimate of those odds.
Here’s your crash course on this all-important little number, and how to whip it into the best home-buying shape possible. Read more
With soaring prices, hordes of competition, and a dearth of properties for sale, snagging the right home for the right price is no easy task. And it’s even worse for first-time buyers.
Of the buyers in the market this past spring, about 42% were shopping for a home for the first time. And their search took longer than ever.
About a quarter of those first-time buyers were looking for more than a year, compared with just 11% two years ago. Meanwhile, nearly a third were in the market for more than six months, compared with only 18% two years earlier.
The results are based on a realtor.com® survey of 879 first-time buyers between March and June.
