How To Pick a New Home You’ll Adore (With a Monthly Payment You Can Afford)

You’ve done your research, saved up for a down payment, and found a Realtor® you adore. Now comes the next step: Find your dream house already!

This is the really fun part, although it does come with its own unique challenges. Even if you love the entire process of house hunting, the options can be overwhelming. Ranch or Colonial?  Suburb or city? Small apartment or palatial townhouse? Built-in 40-foot waterslide or stand-alone 40-foot waterslide? It’s hard not to feel like you’re drowning in the possibilities.

To help winnow the myriad options to find the perfect place for you, heed these tips—and happy searching! Read more

How a Real Estate Agent Can Help Buyers Choose a First Home, Mortgage, and More

Wondering how to choose a Realtor®? Purchasing a new home takes some serious prep work—from cleaning up your credit score to amassing a down payment. But, hey, we’re just getting started! You also need a comrade in arms: a close ally to help steer you toward homes you’ll love more than life itself, find the best possible mortgage, and all in all help you through this emotionally and financially taxing process. That’s where a good real estate agent can make a world of difference.

Here’s how to find one who’s got your back. And your front. Every side, actually. Read more

How Much House Can You Afford? Down Payment and Mortgage Rates Explained

How much house can you afford? Knowing you want to buy a home is one thing; knowing how much of a mortgage payment you can handle is quite another. Too often, dreams and reality collide: You’re yearning for a four-bedroom Colonial, but given your income and debt owed to credit cards and beyond, the best monthly loan payment you can manage is for a two-bedroom bungalow in a sketchy party of town.

So how do you pinpoint a house where the monthly mortgage payment is financially within your reach, and one that won’t drive you deep into debt? Allow us to help you paint your payment profile picture and find that magic number. Read more

How to Save Money for a Down Payment and Closing Costs on a New House

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

How to Improve Your Credit Score to Score a Mortgage for Your First Home

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

First-Time Home Buyer Nightmare: Why It’s Taking Longer to Find the Perfect Home

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.

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