A Real Estate Agent is Essential When Buying a New Home
Are you interested in Buying a New Home? Here are some good reasons why a real estate agent is necessary.
First of all when you buy an existing home you are buying a home with the “options” already present in the home. Essentially, what you see in that home is what you are buying. When you buy a new or soon to be built home there are so many options to choose from. More important, when you browse the “featured model homes” they are usually showcased with all the best features and upgrades that enhance the basic home. Most often buyers are not buying the home at the “base price” because of the features and options that they fall in love with and must have.
When all of the special upgrades and options are added up, that affordable advertised base price quickly jumps up far more than what you believed you could afford. So when you realize this the home you wanted and fell in love with is beyond your reach. The other house, the one you can afford, doesn’t have as many upgrades and options you had begun to dream about and it becomes disheartening.
Had you been working with a real estate agent, you would have been lead down a more realistic path and you would have avoided this disheartening and disappointing experience. Working with a real estate agent, you would have been directed to a community of new homes that fit your budget and lifestlye. Your agent would help guide you in your desires for upgrades in comparison to the basic house and which upgrades and option are more practical choices.
A new home purchase always has options because the basic house is usually pretty spare. A real estate agent would behelp you keep your choices to an affordable limit. The seemingly $400,000 home that you can qualify for typically becomes $500,000 once all of the upgrades and options are added in. Here is an example, if your budget is $400,00 you should be looking at a base value of about $320,000 which allows $80,000 of desirable upgrades and options.
A real estate agent would guide you in choosing the various upgrades. For example guiding you to choose upgrades that you want and would be difficult and costly to add at a later time, like a four foot bump-out in a kitchen or family room. A real estate agent working with you on your behalf would also help navigate and negotiate the purchase of the newly built home.
Buying a newly built home requires planning. Many buyers spontaneously drop-by a new home community and end up registering while they are “just taking a look”. By doing this you may be responsible for your real estate agent’s fee which generally is 3% of the base price. Decline to register and later bring your real estate agent along. By registering at the initial visit with your real estate agent it allows you to get the help of your real estate agent, who repressents your best interest, and to have the builder pay the agents fees.
A good real estate agent working with buyers always protects their client’s best interests.
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