Home buying in Maine | 10 tips buying a house to save you time and money.
This real estate blog post walks you through the correct steps to have a smoother Maine home buying process. What you can do to save time, money and avoid extra frustration. To avoid losing out buying your home sweet home in Maine.
The state of Maine is large, sparsely populated and offers lots of affordable housing for home buyers.
The dream to wake up in your own home is a popular one. Owning a house not renting one is the goal. How to avoid hassle, save time, money, frustration making the investment to buy a home needs a plan.
For starters, first and foremost buying a home in Maine get pre approved, prequalified.
Link up with an experienced bank mortgage “loan arranger” wearing a different kind of mask.
Wash your hands, roll up your sleeves and gather up your pay stubs, last year’s IRS tax filing paperwork.
Make a list of what you owe on your car, student college loans, divorce child support, credit card debt amounts, etc.
The number one tip for home buying in Maine is pre approval, prequalify to know before you start the hunt for a house.
More on the difference between pre approved or prequalified to buy a home in Maine. That pre approvsal or prequalified home buying letter gets the house buying surprises out of the way first.
This step avoids falling in love with a Maine home someone else ends up buying instead of you. Learn upfront can I buy a home and how much house can I afford?
One you have your bank financing approval letter in place, after you know the mortgage loan programs you qualify for and the home has to as well, the next step.
Tip number two, don’t change jobs, buy large items even if they are for you new Maine home.
Stay happily married, keep saving for real estate closing costs and keep your nose clean.
I have seen a home buyer with a green light to buy.
Suddenly learn the couple is no longer bank mortgage approved because of mistakes made.
Do whatever your bank mortgage loan lender instructs when buying a home in Maine.
Not what you thinks would help the home buying process. There are three parts of home buying in Maine. First, unless you can plop down the rather large wad of cash, bank financing approval is needed. The second part of buying a home involves is the house up to mortgage underwriting standards and worth the purchase price.
One more, the last hurdle of the triple crown to jump into a Maine house is the title.
The real estate title to the home you are buying has to be squeaky clean at closing.
Mortgage discharges, property tax liens, no estate heirs squabbling over anything. Right of ways, property line boundary disputes, shared water wells all get examined with a legal eagle eye at the registry of deeds where the title to the property is recorded.
The number three tip for buying a home in Maine? Draw a small circle.
What area of Maine are you thinking of relocating to if you don’t already live there? For out of state relocating home buying moving to Maine, don’t try to tour the entire state looking for a home. 
Maine is too big, no real estate agent can cover that large an approach to home buying.
You find too price ranges are very different the further north, east and west you push up in Maine. Thigh higher up into Maine you go, the lower the house prices.
If you are a home buyer already living in a Maine community, tip number three becomes location.
Intown, out of town, how far away from your job, schools, shopping, whatever is important to you. The house you buy location can save you drive time. What if you could walk to where you need to go instead of involving the family mini van? Houlton Maine is a neighborly, friendly area of the Lobstah state to consider!
Tip number four buying a home in Maine? Patience, study of current market housing real estate inventory.
With COVID19 affecting the way we show and tell in person, video channels are more useful than ever to see more houses. To make better home buying decisions based on lots of properties toured online. To see if a physical walk through is warranted or not.
If the right home is not curently on the market and up for sale, wait. Unlike impulse buying something without trying it on first or that you end up not so hot about when you get it. A house listing you make your own is not so easily tossed into the floor in the closet or tucked away in a drawer out of sight.
Buying a home in Maine is one big investment that requires careful thought and patience to wait for it.
The best fit for your needs within your house buying budget. All combined with whatever bank mortgage loan program you need to make it happen. People are involved in the property listing buying and selling. Consideration of all of their requirements or expectations is not always easy to accomplish.
What about tip number five for home buying in Maine? How cheap can I buy the house.
As a buyer, when you find a property that is different from the rest and catches your eye. When you make an offer, don’t think let’s start at a fourth of the listing price. The seller does not take you serious, thinks you better find something way way cheaper.
You may be just looking for any wiggle room or the Maine home price bottom line. But be prepared the listing price is the selling one. In multiple offer real estate buying and selling situations, the what it takes to come out on top in a bidding war is to go higher than the listing figure. Or walk, keep looking.
Tip six for home buying in Maine, easy does it on all the contingencies of the sale.
Too many loading up the purchase and sale agreement and the seller will not pick you from the herd of house hunters. Put your big boy or girl pants on and don’t try to put everything on the seller to fix this, pay for that.
Long time delays won’t work either. It is a seller’s market in the Maine real estate circles during the COVID19 pandemic induced shortage of inventory and motivated buyers itching to buy if you don’t.
What else? Tip seven for home buying in Maine today. Find the best home buying mortgage loan program.
Remember the cost of financing is so attractive, the rates very low. You the Maine home buyer can afford much more house today than back when the cost of a bank loan mortgage came with a much stiffer interest rate attached.
My first home was a fixed rate 12.25% during a real estate market when prevailing interest rates were an adjustable 16.5% and higher. Hang on, we are on a roll in this blog post on home buying a in Maine.
Tip eight for home buyers, when you tour a property be sensitive to sellers and renters inside occupied homes.
Whittle it down to a few homes after cross referencing your gotta have, don’t want list.
The state of Maine and ME REALTORS group both are advising don’t run the roads back and forth in and out of Vacationland.
Watch real estate Maine home videos.
Make sure you are and stay duly qualified to buy any home in Maine you are considering before darkening the door to it.
COVID19 quickly tightened up the importance of being house buying qualified upfront. Plus doing much more homework going in to the find the best possible roof over your head.
Each real estate market behaves so differently.
The one you left out of state and traditions there are not the same landscape of norms in Maine. Simple approach to buying and selling without the layers of players. Lower cost property listings bring it all back down to Earth.
Don’t expect to put down money to hold, tie up a home seller until you get here to figure out first hand if you want to buy or now for real. Property owners want to sell to qualified buyers ready, willing and able to buy today. The bird in the hand is worth two in the distance that may or may not materialize.
What else for buying a home in Maine?
Tip nine, provide enough time for the home seller to be contacted, to ask questions and have a day or two to consider any house offers.
If you present a contract in the morning expecting a home seller to give you a positive acceptance return acceptance by five o’clock the same day, you are mistaken. Especially on a Sunday when it is not business as usual and one of the big reasons we live in Maine.
Sellers like home buyers have lives. They usually have partners in the decision making and time to digest, sleep and pray about what to do takes a little consideration.
Just like buying is a big decision, so is a seller making a change in where they live to move on to the next life chapter.
The last tip for home buying in Maine?
Tip ten. Stop renting, consider the first home you are lucky enough to move into probably won’t be your last one.
Starter car, beginner home, same approach to Maine housing. Do the best you can with interest rates, bank programs you qualify for and be prepared to apply lots of sweat equity into whatever you buy for a Maine home.
The west coast HGTV houses of the rich and famous is not the template to apply to home buying in small town rural Maine. Where houses represent a better value and a heck of a lot less zero places. Hollywood reality real estate shows make it entertaining and look easy to flip this house for a handsome profit.
Maine real estate home sales are a little more realistic and the numbers are not so sky high.
Comfortable, easy to heat, not needing a new roof is way more attractive to a Maine home buyer not out to impress anyone. With “look at what I have that your home lacks” keeping up with Jone’s. thinking.
Growing up on the Maine potato farm my family ran a side vegetable stand. It generated some extra cash to keep things afloat expense wise. While all those hundred dollar bills planted in the fields waited for fall harvest operations to get them out of the ground and into storage. The vegetable stand sold lots of stuff but corn was a big move.
Two kinds of corn ears; sugar and gold and early king. The first white and yellow and sweet. The latter just yellow and big ears for large paws. Anyway, we sold a baker’s dozen ears of corn on the Maine roadside farm stand.
So throwing in three more buying a home in Maine real estate tips… I know I promised ten but you are getting a lucky thirteen tips if you keep reading. Also under promise and over deliver.
Tip eleven for Maine home real estate home buyers.
When you reach out to the Maine agent or broker, if you have to leave a cell phone or office phone message, speak slowly, clearly. Lots of crappy cell phones and poor wireless connections and calls made with lots of background noise.
If your phone number is not showing up on caller ID. And if despite lots of re-listens and attempts to get envelop information to learn the correct phone number fail. Then it is a crap shoot. Trying a few wrong numbers to get right back and make contact to help the real estate caller. Shooting in the dark for the right phone number or email address response for the agent or broker or real estate secretary is not the most productive use of time.
Tip twelve buying a home in Maine home buying involves your email account.
Get an easier to remember and recite email address. Check your spam filter on your email account. Before blasting the real estate agent or broker for not sending information as requested, make sure to look in the email spam filter. It’s in there.
And lots of time went into the response to help answer questions, to suggest other properties that might work even better for the best real estate fit.
Some email address are pretty cryptic. Even with phonetic military alpha charlie bravo delta clarification repeats, one “E” that sounds like a “B” or “C” or “D” will derail the entire information response trail.
Tip thirteen for Maine home buyers. sellers, other house purchasers are liars.
Everyone is an expert at what you might or should not consider paying for a Maine home today. Even sellers will tell you they got a certain figure for a place when public records indicate otherwise.
Do your home work, consider it’s been awhile since some of your family, friends, your barber or hairdresser purchased a place. Real estate is a fast moving industry in how it operates and reinvents itself.
New home property real estate listings come and go quickly too.
Like merging with Interstate highway multi lanes of traffic, try to keep up and go with the flow. Relax, study, wait for the right financing, keep working on your credit debt ratios and scores. Study the real estate market like a hawk. Know what is a good deal, what matches your gotta have, don’t want list you created when you began this hunt to buy a home in Maine.
Home buying in Maine, the blog post topic for today.
Thinking of buying or selling in Maine? MOOERS REALTY here to help in the real estate process. It starts with questions from your end, me listening on this one. When you are ready, let’s connection and help you with the Maine real estate puzzle pieces.
I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Real Estate Broker
