Do You Have the Correct Home Buyer Mindset to be Buying a Home?

By learning what you need to know and preparing how to purchase a home ahead of time, you will be less likely to become so enamored with a particular property that you fall into the traps and the pitfalls that are so often the result of IDM, or Irrational Decision Making.

Do not allow your emotions to come before sound and rational reasoning when making the decision to purchase a home.

Let's face it; if you've been out house hunting, you know the feeling you get when you finally think you've found a house you really like.

You're like a kid in a toy store, excited about the possibilities that this dream house could really be yours.

When you go to see the home, you're herded through it like sheep in a predetermined pattern.

• You're not encouraged to spend as much time as you need in any one place.
• You're not able to ask as many questions as you would like.
• You're not asked if you would like to set up another time to come back and go through the house again.

The option to sit down and have a good conversation with the owner is not available to you.

In other words, you're expected to make a decision on the largest single purchase of your life without having many of the facts you really need.

Of course, you're likely to get a home inspection and an appraisal done. But, if you think that's enough to protect you, you've got another thing coming to you.

After over 21 years dealing in real estate and its many players, I am here to tell you it simply is not.

• When it comes down to buying a home, nobody but you is going to be watching out for your best interest.
• You need to get as much information as you can before you buy.
• There is no one who can (or will) be as thorough as you.

Why? Because nobody else has to be as thorough.

It's not their home. They're not going to be living there.

And, whatever issues you end up having, they can't see them from their house!

Ask anyone who has ever purchased a home this one question:

After you purchased your home, were there things that you saw, noticed, or realized about the property that had they been seen, noticed or realized BEFORE making the purchase would have changed the way you proceeded with the home buying process?

Possible changes might have included:

• Offering less for the home,
• Making it a condition of the sale that something be repaired or replaced, or
• Not having gone through with the purchase at all!

Think about that for a moment.

What is the probability that you're going to be able to keep a level head when the real estate agent is telling you that you need to act quickly because there are three other showings after you?

And you "just love" the house...

If you are unprepared, but feeling pressured, how likely is it that you will make an informed decision quickly when you haven't even done any homework on the property?

Remember:

• Don't be pressured into making the mistakes typical homebuyers make.
• Take the time to do your homework and get the information you need to make a rational buying decision, then
• Step back, take a deep breathe and really look at what you're about to buy.

Copyright 2005 Don Berthiaume

Don Berthiaume gives you the questions you need to ask when buying a home. For more details, and for a free 4-part mini-course in home buying, visit this site now: Buying a Home

There is something emotionally charged about the buying and selling of New York high-end real estate. How else to explain the juggernaut of reality TV shows about high-end brokers?

After 30 years of marriage, Sharon and Michael Newman decided it was finally time to move from the Catskills to New York City.

On blocks near Kissena Park streets are quiet, houses are small, and the electricity that charges the atmosphere in downtown Flushing is nowhere to be found.

A five-story, seven-bedroom house in Brooklyn Heights has sweeping views of New York Harbor and the Manhattan skyline.

Demand is so intense that there are waiting lists in some buildings, and a few landlords report that eager renters are even bidding up rents.

Sales at the very high end of the market barely missed a beat in the recession. But that prosperity hasn’t yet trickled down.

A Flatiron condo, a Midtown South co-op and a Brooklyn Heights carriage house.

A four-bedroom ranch in Montclair, N.J., and a four-bedroom colonial Cape in Babylon, N.Y.

For a century, Roosevelt Island housed a grim penitentiary. It was demolished in the 1930s.

More borrowers are opting for fixed-rate loans with terms other than the standard 30 or 15 years, especially when it comes to refinancings.

Two more glass skyscrapers are added to a group of towers on the waterfront of Long Island City.

Insurance coverage for a co-op unit; when a tenant is ‘blacklisted’; a co-op is smaller than estimated.

The market for $500,000-to-$600,000 houses in Westchester has become especially active.

A shaky real estate market means more sellers are providing buyer concessions, from gift cards to help with paying property taxes.

Houses of worship are adaptable to residential and other uses as congregations dwindle.

The settlement reached last week over questionable mortgage practices by major American banks hardly cracks the iceberg that is the foreclosure mess.

Under the settlement, nearly two million Americans could benefit from mortgage relief from the nation’s biggest banks.

A cold war-era satellite relay station is for sale in California after a Silicon Valley mogul gave up on plans to turn it into a weekend home.

How can I make my front porch more appealing to buyers?

Court hearings meant to protect New York homeowners from foreclosure are hopelessly slowed by endless paperwork and requests for additional information.

The Bay Area and Silicon Valley expect the windfall from the Facebook stock offering to make their in-demand region even hotter.

The house, designed by the architect Eric Fisher, looms over the street like a big industrial arm.

A town house in Dallas, a midcentury modern in Rhode Island and a Tudor in Denver.

Prices in some parts of the country are still off by as much as 25 percent from their 2007 peak.

Trinity Church is the largest landlord in Hudson Square and is part of the effort to rezone the area to residential from manufacturing.

Rising oil prices and a boom in shale exploration are leading companies to add office space in the Houston area, most notably Exxon Mobil.

Ms. de França is the president and chief executive of Douglas Elliman Development Marketing, which focuses on new residential developments.

Meet the real estate broker’s interns: an ambitious group willing to do anything, earn nothing and wake up early on a Sunday to fluff the couch cushions at open houses.

A Flatiron condo, a Midtown South co-op and a Brooklyn Heights carriage house.

A four-bedroom ranch in Montclair, N.J., and a four-bedroom colonial Cape in Babylon, N.Y.

Homes in Dallas, Rhode Island and Denver.

Compare the cost of renting and buying equivalent homes.

For recently divorced men, a new breed of decorators offers help navigating a strange new world.

Plants that light up the winter garden can be found at Broken Arrow Nursery in Connecticut, which has long been a favorite of gardening geeks.

A sister in need drew the painter Beverly McIver back home to North Carolina, unaware that a new beginning was in store for both of them.

A jewelry designer finds striking new objects for storage.

Timothy Sakamoto and Jochen Repolust are part of the small but growing niche making mobile apps focused on specific works of architecture.

To promote an auction of 20th- and 21st-century design, the interior designer Stephen Sills has created a preview exhibition in an apartment at the Apthorp.

Fishs Eddy now sells plates acquired from the archives of the now-defunct Syracuse China Corporation, many more than 100 years old.

The designer Russell Greenberg creates custom baby rattles with ends shaped like profiles of mom and dad.