Actually Buying a Home #067

so yeah, I'm looking forward to talking about that. Before we get to it, I wanted to let you know that one of our neighbors gave some hand me down bikes to my girls. His girl's had outgrown them. They got some new bikes, and so my girls have been

super excited to ride bikes. And the weather has been a little bit warmer lately, so it's been really really fun getting out there and just kind of riding bikes with the girls because normally I put them on my bike and and that's a lot of fun, but it's so much fun just to watch them get into it on their own too. So yeah, we're really enjoying bike

riding right now. It wasn't I on that text thread as well, where it was offered to you and me, Hey, you never and then and then he took both of them jerk, Hey, I offered after the fact, I did say, you're welcome to one. But you're pretty stocked on bikes over here. Yeah, actually, yeah, we've got some freebees as well. I keep kind of stashing them down to my basement down the cross space when the time comes and I'm gonna pull them out and hose them off. Get him

nice and shining for the girls. Yeah, I think I saw you post a picture from from when you guys were riding. Was that during the week as well? We were kind of taken some time off from work. Yeah, I knocked off a little bit early. We we went to a biking path essentially, and and the girls had a blast. And there are a couple of playgrounds along the way that's the best. So yeah, we're like biking for a little while, stopping off at the playground, biking

some more, stopping off. Yeah, the playground destination makes it worthwhile for the kiddos. I was asking though, because I think the same day I had family in town and I was a little bit nervous because I've got a lot of work on my plate these days, and to kind of be able to take that much time off during the day when I know that I'm typically working, and it was it was hard. I kind of had like a little panic attack when I realized that, oh, no, I'm not going to be able to get the things

done that I need to get done today. But you know what I realized, I kind of reminded myself, back to the Mission Statement episode that we did with Scott, that having this kind of flexibility is important to me and to be able to pry myself away from my work, which is essentially what I have to do, uh is pride myself away, but to remind myself that, no, I

need to spend time with my family. I need to spend time like you with your kids, just on a random day when when it's beautiful outside, and to give yourself that flexibility. And it's sort of like lifestyle shaping, like we know in our heads what we want our life to sort of look like. And it's weird to say this, but for me, man, it's it takes a lot of work to actually see it out and do the things that I know that I want to do on paper or in my head, but when it comes

to my actual actions, it's really hard. So it's really difficult for me. And I don't know if that means I'm a workaholic or or what, but seeing you kind of do that was inspiring for for me, So so I appreciate that. Man. Yeah, no, I don't think you're alone in that at all. I think it's really hard for us to match up kind of our beliefs and

what we hold dear to our actions. Sometimes that's a human tendency, right to to say that we value one thing, but in fact all these other things get in the way of us prioritizing the thing that we say we

care about the most. And I think probably all of our listeners can resonate with that to a certain degree, that the things that we want to hold up as the most important things in our lives, we find ourselves answering emails when we should be spending time with our kids, or we find ourselves on our smartphones in bed when we should be having a nice moment with our spouse, right,

or even just hopping back on the computer. Like for me, it's just after I take a shower at night, because that's how I roll take that night shower helps me feel all warm and cozy and clean, and then I then I go to bed. I gotta imagine you're in a low percentage of people that take showers at night. No, man, there's gotta be someone else out there. Just like the hot water thing. I think there's folks out there who also shower and it, but sometimes they're probably the same

four people. But I know that if I get back on the computer for a little bit more and hammer out a few more emails or do some outlines or just some other work that I know it needs to happen. It's not just for ten minutes. It ends up being for thirty minutes or an hour, and then I stay up late, and it's it's not a priority of mine.

I know, I want to try to go to bed sooner. Yeah, And I think that's why the mission statement is helpful, because it's that kind of kicking the pants, the reinforcement when you are doing something that essentially violates your mission statement. It's a reminder, right that general push to to actually live life according to the terms that you want, and not to just be pushed into a way of living by force. So I think it's good to be at

least aware of it. You know, anytime there's a nice day like that, I think to myself, Man, this is a time where I could have the flexibility if I was more maybe diligent about getting my work done more efficiently and to take advantage of the flexibility I have. It's it's tricky, It's tough, all Joel. You want to

introduce the beer for this episode, Yeah, Matt. Today on the show, we're drinking Boulevard Space Camper Cosmic I p A. So this is a brand new release from Boulevard Brewing Company, and our friend Hillary over there send us some of the spears, so we're excited to have it on the show today. Hillary, she's a listener and friend of the show. So we'll let you know what we think about the spear towards the end. And I'm excited to share this

one with you today. Man, while we talk about buying a house, all right, Matt, The reason we need to talk about actually buying a home is because the difference between getting a house that you want and not getting it can be incredibly small. There are a lot of little things that can help your offers stand out and they can make the buying process go more smoothly. And most of us only buy a house once or twice in our lifetime, a few times maybe, and so we

don't really know what to do. And even if we bought a house five years ago, we've completely forgotten. Things have changed and we need a helping hand. We need to kind of know what the process is like so that we can stand out when we're making an offer, and so we can actually close on the house that we want while getting the best rate in the best terms. Yeah, on our last episode, one of the things we discussed was getting a great realtor. However, different realtors have strengths

and yours. You know, they may be a great alter but they may not be good at teaching you through the process of the actual purchasing process. You know, they might be great at negotiating, or they might know a neighborhood really well. But if you're the kind of person who likes to know every step of the way, like what's happening now, what's happening now, Like, certainly we would encourage you to ask, but yeah, this episode is for you.

We're gonna talk through all the different little steps of submitting an offer and just all the small details that

go into that. And even if you have a great agent, which is awesome, well, this is gonna help you be able to ask the right questions because an agent is often busy negotiating your deal right and getting the paperwork together and making sure that you're shown the houses that you're interested in even before that stuff happens, and so they've got a lot on their plate and it's not always based on negligence that they don't explain things well,

it's because they've got a lot going on. And so this episode hopefully will give you the ability to ask the right questions so that you can stay informed during the process and make sure that you are watching your own back because obviously your agent is trying to do that, but more than anybody else's it's your responsibility to make

sure that that you're going about this process correctly. So where we are now is that you've looked at tons of houses, hopefully you've maybe even looked for a month two months trying to find that right house, that that house that you know will will work for you. And so after the break, we're gonna get to the first step that is required if you want to purchase a home, and that's submitting an offer, you got to do that,

all right, Matt. Let's talk about submitting an offer. And typically most people just don't think through this step enough. They don't think that submitting an offer is actually all that important. They're just trying to decide whether they're gonna submit an offer with the asking price or not. But there are all sorts of other things that you can do to make your offer more competitive and increase the likelihood of you actually going under contract on that home.

And so that's what we want to do. As we talked through submitting an offer, and the first thing that you should do when you're submitting an offer is have your agent call the listing agent to kind of get a feel for what's going on. This is when having a great agent, like we talked about at the end of last week's episode can pay off majorly for you.

So a personable agent can talk to the agent and kind of get a feel for whether the seller needs to move out quickly, is trying to sell a sap and you might be able to infer from that that they're actually willing to take a little bit less money if you're willing to close in two weeks as opposed to a month and a half. And maybe that's the most important thing about your offer. For sellers, it's not

always about accepting the highest dollar amount. There's so many other things that go into creating a winning offer, and so we want to kind of tackle those. But that's the first thing. Have your agent called the other agent and get a feel for what's going on, Joel. A great agent will will help you to obviously communicate with the seller, and they will help convince the selling agent to want to sell the house to you. You know, they're they're there to talk you up and make you

look great. Yeah, and I swear I've got an agent like that where she literally has that sort of power over people to make them want to sell me the house. And it is amazing. And a key thing that your agent will help you to do is to figure out how much to offer. Your agent can pull comps in the area, actual stays that have gone through, and we'll

help you determine how much to offer. And these comparables are based on other houses, the amenities that the houses have, square footage, because what you really want to avoid doing man is coming in with a crazy low offer where you end up offending the seller and you've completely lost your chance at purchasing that home. But when you're talking with your agent about how much you should offer, just

make sure to stick to your budget. Like we talked about before, it's really easy to get excited and emotionally tied to a home that you've been looking at and kind of pursuing, But it's really important to stick to your budget at the same time, because you can find yourself biting off more than you wanted to chew and that's just not a position you want to be in. Okay, so your offer, you've made it. But the fact is the seller isn't likely to accept your offer straight up,

like as is. There's a good chance that there's gonna be some negotiating going on. They are likely going to submit a counter offer. It's not often that, you know, whatever price that you throw out there to the to the seller that they say, okay, all this looks awesome, they're probably gonna counter in my go back and forth a few rounds. And like, the reason I bring this up is because this is when it starts getting kind

of real, you know, Joel, start biting your fingernails. Yeah, like because you think crap, Like is this what I am going to agree to pay for? And what's important? And we're gonna get to this as well. But there's a whole period of time where you can negotiate further and make amendments to your offer, specifically depending on the

results of your inspection. So just know that there's more wiggle room down the road and that chances are there's going to be more negotiating and other counter offers that can be made. So real quick, let's let's say a few things that are gonna make you stand out as having a better offer than other people. And for instance, Matt and I we've talked before about putting down on

a home. If you have a higher down payment and you write that into your offer and the seller then knows that you've got cash in the bank, they're much more likely to accept your offer than someone going with a three and a half percent down FH loan. Your likelihood of getting through the financing process is much greater if you've got a lot of cash, you know, sitting in the bank and you're ready to put it down

towards that home. Yeah, I mean, another aspect is the earnest money, Like, this is money that you've got to put down to put towards the closing and then obviously it goes towards the total amount and do at the closing table. But you know, you could technically put down five dollars for earnest money, but the seller is probably gonna look at you and think, nah, you're crazy, Like, who are you putting down five dollars? Earn this money can typically vary between one to five percent of the

purchase price. Most deals that I've done, it's just sort of just a set amount. It's like, all right, you want to put two or three grand down, or you wanna put five or seven just to make it look really strong. But generally speaking, the more earnest money that you can put down when you submit your offer, it looks more attractive to the seller because they see that you're being serious and then you're not messing around and

wasting your time. Yeah, kind of an outside of the box way to make your offer look a little bit stronger too, is to write a personal letter to the

seller and they want to always read it. It's not always a winner, but that's one thing that can help you stand out if two offers are incredibly similar, and I got a personal letter from someone that really fell in love with the house, wanted to talk about what their future looked like in the house, and explained that they wanted to put a garden out back, or how they wanted to eventually raise a family there someday, something like that like that would kind of tug at my

heart strings. And if it was a thousand or two thousand dollars difference, or it was a difference of earnest money or something like that, like I would be much more likely to consider the person with the slightly weaker offer that submitted a handwritten note telling me how much they love the house and and you want the house you're selling to go into good hands, and so that one kind of outside of the box way to approach submitting an offer can make the difference between potentially in

a tight market in a bidding war, can make the difference between you getting a house or not. Yeah, Joel, that's a great example. And that's something that Kate and I did in this house and the house ever recording, and we had reached out a few months before the house was ever even on the market, before it was even an option for them to sell. And we you know, we just touched base and kind of explained to them our situation, and you know, they kindly got back and

said that they weren't in a position to sell. But guess what in the coming months when they were in a position to sell, and they knew that they were ready to get rid of the house because I mean they were living overseas. Guess who were the first folks

that they contacted. It was me and my and my wife and so we in in this instance, we were able to get the home without it even going on the market, which is really key because at that point you're avoiding the competition and other folks that are also interested in the house, and that can also drive up the price. Yeah, that's pretty sweet, mat You've got a good deal on that. And also you want to consider

things like the schedule of when you're closing. Like I mentioned earlier, when you're talking to your agent, if it sounds like the seller needs to be out of their home quickly, submitting an offer with a closing date that happened sooner is a better way to go, right And if you can make that happen, your offer just became a whole lot stronger, and the closing date can just be a crucial factor of whether your offer is going

to be even considered or not. So, yeah, you want to make sure you kind of understand what the seller wants and submit a closing date in your offer that kind of functions in accordance with that. Yeah, and just being flexible because in your instance, you're talking about it bumping up, but it could be the exact opposite. It just depends on the seller that's oler might realize that well, they wanted to go ahead and get it listed. The fact is that they don't want to move until the

end of the summer. And so if you have the flexibility to say, well, all right, that that works for us. You know, we don't need to move in until August as well, your offer just became so much more valuable in their eyes, and they're gonna want to lock that down they can move on with their life and focus on where they're gonna move next. And so these are all the key points that make your offer look good

and attractive to a seller. Also baked into your offer though our contingencies, and essentially these are like escape clauses. This allows you to kind of pull that rip chord just in case things kind of get dicey, because often, especially with the first time homebuyers, you think, well, at what point can I turn back? Like is it too late? Like are we agreed to purchase this home? If we back down now, would we lose our earnest money that

we've put down? Because obviously you want your offer to look really good, so you've put down a healthy amount of earnest money. And so with the help of your realtor, what you'll want to have done is put these contingencies within your offer. And these are things like your financing, inspection and appraisal contingency, Like these are all things allow you to back out of the deal if these things aren't met. And so, Joe, you wanna kick it off

with the financing continguency. Yeah, it gives you some peace of mind, right, And so yeah, the financing contingency is is one that you're gonna want to have in there. You're gonna want to make sure that during that due diligence period that with the financing contingency in place, you can back out with no financial penalty to you if

you aren't able to secure financing from a lender. And by the way, this due diligence period that we're talking about, I would say that an average due diligence period lasts about seven days. But make sure to ask your realtor whether there is a state law that influences the length of the due diligence period. It's a really important time for you to kind of get your ducks in a row to make sure that this is the house you

still want to buy. And so as you're lining up your your financing, you'll want to get sort of your final approval for that specific house that you're making an offer on. And another thing that's important to keep in mind too, is that you want to make sure that you haven't you know, gotten new credit. Like so from

the time you were preapproved. You know, talked about that in the previous two episodes ago, the things that you want to do before you purchase a home, but you want to make sure that you're not getting new credit. You want to make sure you haven't applied for a new loan. Even getting a new credit card could drop your credit score enough to where you might not qualify for that loan that you did qualify for. Even a few weeks before. Yeah, it could mean the difference between

getting the house or not. And even if it doesn't mean that, it could just mean a higher interest rate for you because you pulled out some new credit and it dropped your credit score and therefore you don't qualify for quite as good of a rate. And so another huge contingency that you'll have worked into your offer is the inspection contingency. And it even allows you to back out of the house even completely if there are so many repairs that are going to have to be done

and it's just more than you're willing to take on. Yeah, it's really important not to skimp on an inspection because, yeah, they're typically in the realm of three five hundred dollars, could be even more depending on the size of the home or whether it's a multifamily property. But just like a good realtor is worth their weight in gold, so is a good home inspector. You want to do your research, find a good one, and it's preferable to be there

while the home inspector is looking through the home. You're gonna learn a lot about the house while you're doing it, a lot more than you can learn just from reading the report afterwards. Being there with the home inspector I have found throughout the years has been really really helpful

to me. There was one time where I skipped altogether getting a home inspector out of property I was buying, and I realized that in the end it cost me a lot more than that fo I saved because when it came to the negotiations during the due diligence period, well, I didn't have a home inspection report and the claims

I was making. I'd had a contractor come in and look at the home and he kind of gave me some ideas of the things that were wrong, but there was no report to go on, and so so my leverage when it came to negotiating was completely stripped away. That would be an example of being cheap over frugal, exactly, exactly,

no doubt it was. It was, and I learned my lesson, like I'm always having a home inspector and so many of the other times when I bought a house, having a home inspection just helped me so much at the negotiation table, to the tune of thousands and thousands of dollars.

And Johan, you mentioned kind of meeting with the inspector after the fact, and I think that's that's incredibly important as well, because in person, there's a lot more Like you said, that the inspector can communicate to you face to face, like you look at the report and there's gonna be things that are wrong with your house. That's

just facts, like, it's just how it is. And especially to the first time HomeBuyer, you're gonna get that inspection report and you're gonna think this house is about to fall over because of all the write ups. Especially, Yeah, it's it's alarming. Yeah, especially in older homes like we tend to own in this area. But you know, meeting them face to face will help you to kind of rank and prioritize these fixes that that need to take place, versus you feeling like, oh, this house needs to be

bulldozed because everything seems to be broken. Yeah. Completely. I feel like a first time home buyer sees the report oftentimes and and they're just totally shocked. It freaks them out. And being able to look your inspector in the eye and say, okay, translate this into plain English for me and let me know what you actually think of the home that's just so helpful for you as the buyer, and the report let that be the shocking thing that

then allows you to make negotiations. But knowing what you know kind of what the home inspector thinks overall about the home is like really helpful for you as you decide whether or not to move forward. Yeah, and Joel,

you mentioned negotiating, and so that's the next step. So after you have that report, essentially you can earn back all that money that you spent on the inspection and even more if there are some things that are aging or things that are completely done maybe incorrectly on the home, you know, like if you have a furnace getting ready

to go out or a roof. So each one of those is five thousand dollars and so that's ten thousand dollars that you may have missed out on the opportunity to negotiate down And we're big fans of getting the dollar amount reduced, you know, adjusted off of the selling price versus having the seller actually do that work because you can work with contractors that you maybe are more familiar with. The other thing is too, is that you

can have that work done on your own timeline. It's not like, well, it's like the roof is getting kind of old, but you know they could last another three years, So why not waiting another three years before we need to replace the roof or anything. With the furnace, it's like, Okay, that's an eighteen year old furnace. Chances are it's gonna be out soon, but it's working right now, and so I'm gonna be inclined to let that furnace stay for

another three to five, who knows, maybe ten years. But the fact is, you want to make sure you do have that money set aside for that system when it does eventually crash. Yeah, And most sellers they don't want to be scheduling contractors and workers to come in and make prepares on their house. And so if you can find a sweet spot of a dollar amount off of the final purchase price of the home, I mean, that's gonna be the best way to do it, not just for you, put for the seller in most cases. So

keep that in mind. Instead of having a laundry list of issues that you want the seller to address, just ask for money off the price of the house. And I also wanted to mention to like try not to let your emotions get the best of you, because there's gonna be a lot of negotiating. There's gonna be a lot offers going back and forth, and they're gonna say no, like are you crazy, you know, whatever they decide to tell you, and it might start to feel personal, but

the fact is is it's a game. They are trying to get the best dollar for their property, and you're trying to spend as little as possible as well. So this is another reason that having a great agent will insulate you from that a little bit, because they're used to taking the responses from the sellers and sort of translating that into language that maybe your agent knows that you can handle. But yeah, just don't let it get personal. It's just about each party trying to get the best

bang for their buck. You're gonna want to be aware too, that your lender is going to order an appraisal to assess the value of the house to make sure that what you're paying is the same or potentially less than what the house is worth according to an appraiser. And if for some reason that appraisal comes in lower than the agreed to purchase price, well then you have an option to either back out or to renegotiate the price.

But just be aware that an appraisal is a standard thing that happens in pretty much every home buying situation. So that's a list of things that happened during due diligence, And keep in mind there's other contingencies as well, so make sure you check with your your realtor on that.

And so after the break, we're gonna talk about things that happen after due diligence leading up to actually closing on the house, all right, Matt, So once due diligence is completely done with, you're gonna want to continue to work with your lender and make sure they have all the financial documents that they need to make sure that you can close on time, because, to be honest, that's a huge pain in the entire process, right is getting your tax returns, your W two's, everything over to your

lender to make sure that they have all the information they need so that you can actually buy the house. Also, you're gonna want to talk to your insurance agent or your insurance company to make sure that they know that

you're buying this house. They can get you a quote on homeowners insurance and just make sure that you have a policy because you're gonna need that at the closing table for this new home purchase and the next This is gonna seem kind of basic, but you want to make sure you've got your utilities and even your mail scheduled to start when you are going to close on

that house. At this point in the process, the date has already been set for the actual closing, and so you want to make sure that you've got those utilities ready to go so you can maybe pick up that pizza and go sit on the dining room floor and

kind of celebrate after you close. One other really important thing that you also want to make sure you have ready to go before the closing date is you want to make sure that you have received your wiring instructions so that way you can have the funds where they need to be by the specific date. And Joel I mentioned this out of personal experience because the first investment

property that Kate and I purchased, we totally slacked. And I don't know if it's that we slacked, or if the lender slacked or what, but we did not receive

the wiring instructions or if we did. We skipped over that email and we showed up at the closing table, signed all the documents and they were asking, all right, like we're the funds, like they should be here by now, right, dude, We did not have the funds wired over and it was at the end of the day, and we thought we were gonna lose the deal because of this small detail, even though it was tons and tons of money, because it was a huge John payment, but you want to

make sure you've got that set up. You want to make sure there's no last minute snaphoos. In our case, the closing attorney they just made some adjustments to the all the clothes documents and everybody was super cool. We were so nervous though, we thought for sure that we had lost the deal. And one thing on wiring funds, I just wanted to quickly mention that there are actually

a lot of scams out there. There are some sophisticated scammers that have figured out when individuals are closing on a home and they are sending an email asking for funds to be wired and they're siphoning forty fifty sixty a hundred thousand dollar down payments from people, and there's just no recourse once you get scammed and wire your funds to a scam artist. And so just be aware when you do get an email, it's best to call your agent and call the closing attorney just to make

sure that you have the right instructions in hand. So it's just something to kind of be aware of. Yeah, that's crazy, man, I've never heard of that. So now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about the actual closing date and what someone buying a home can expect. Yeah, Joe, this is like the actual date that you go into sign all the documents to

purchase the house. And so typically this is at an attorney's office and they're the ones who've put together all the documents, all the all the legal papers, and most of those are required specificically by the lender, assuming that you're financing the house. But just be ready to spend at least an hour signing form after form. There are

so many of them. And keep in mind to as you're signing all these documents, if there's something that you don't understand or something that sounds kind of weird to you, just ask the closing attorney and man and all the deals that we've ever done. The closing attorneys have been so incredibly patient and kind, and I guess they're just used to it. They're used to focus being in there,

not knowing what they're doing. They're signing their names on all these papers, and I found that they're really experienced when it comes to quickly explaining what it is that you're signing. All right. So a big question that most buyers have when they're at the closing table or even before is who pays for what? And usually the closing costs are paid by the buyer, So if you're the one buying the home right, you're usually paying the closing

costs unless you have written that into the offer. And in an intense market, you're typically not asking for closing costs to be paid by the seller. But in a more lax in a more buyers market, you might be asking for closing costs from the seller, but just know that that's typically paid the buyer unless you've put that in the offer and it's been agreed to by the seller. Real turpees are typically paid by the seller, again, unless something different has been made clear in the offer that

you made earlier. Edul And additionally, those numbers should be spelled out in your closing documents that you receive ahead of time. That way, it's not the sort of last minute a bit of information that you get surprised with at the closing table. Yeah, your lender is going to send you essentially a closing disclosure that will fill you in on all the numbers, including the exact amount that you are going to need to bring to the closing table, so you know exactly how much you need to be

wiring uh to the closing attorney. Right Also too, we're talking about the closing table. The seller may or may not be sitting directly across from you at the table. It just depends. I've had friends when they purchased homes they never got to meet the seller, like they're in a completely different room. And most instances where we've purchased, we were literally sitting across the table, and that can actually be a kind of cool time to talk to them and get to know little quirks and weird things

about the house. We've gotten, like our alarm codes at that point before, and we've kind of gotten the scoop on neighbors that live on either side of the house and just kind of getting that insider information, like directly from the previous owner to be really helpful and sort of like this cool passing of the torch. Yeah, for sure, I found I found it to be kind of the same whether it's an investment property or a personal property. Just kind of talking to the previous owner is super helpful.

And I always like, hope they're there, right because I learned a little bit more so once you're done, whether right hand or left hand, in either hand is just going to be completely destroyed at the end of closing, right because you will have signed so many documents, and I think some closing attorneys are moving towards, you know, more electronic signatures at the closing. That's gonna happen more

and more. But for right now, in most instances, your hand is gonna be incredibly worn out, so put some ice on that. But at that point, with a fatigued hand, you now are the proud owner of a house and that is exciting stuff. Yeah, man, that's when you get the keys, Like, that's the moment you've been working towards.

Right now. I mentioned this the second ago, but Pizza Kate and I had this tradition of after closing, we would go and get a pizza, go to the new place and enjoy the pizza, kind of sit on the counters in the kitchen or maybe sit on the floor in the dining room and sell alebrate the fact that

you've achieved this point, Like you've been working hard towards this. Obviously, you've been saving up a lot of money for a down payment, you've been looking for a house, you've gone through the entire closing process, and now you get to

you get to finally take it all in and enjoy it. Yeah, homebuying can feel almost like a war of attrition, and so celebrating after a victory is huge because not only did you just deal with the closing table and just kind of the intensity that that can be, but really, yeah, it is having saved up for that down payment, found the house, gotten financing, made a solid negotiation, gotten an inspection, done all those things. You've gone through the entire process,

and it is a beast of a process. And so yeah, you celebrate whether it's pizza or whatever. But typically, yeah, all you're waiting to move all your furniture in and all that stuff, and so pizza is just the easiest

way to go it's handheld foods. That's the way to go after after closing, Okay, and then next you're moved into the house, you're getting all settled in, you don't want to forget to file for homestead exemption, and that's the status that you can file with your state that basically lets them know that this is our primary residents, we're living here are it's our homestead, and that gives you a huge discount on your taxes every year this

and save you hundreds and hundreds of dollars. So don't forget to do that once you've moved into your house. Buying a house is an intense experience, but owning a home is such a really cool feeling. We've talked before about how owning a home isn't always the best investment, right, and that's because we're putting a lot of our financial eggs in one basket, and a home is not something that appreciates at the same rate as the stock market,

so we can't really consider an investment. But it can be such a good move for us as humans right to be able to be settled in one place, in a place that we want to call home for a

long period of time. But it is important as we think about the fact that it's not a great investment, to make sure that we aren't becoming house poor in this process of buying a home, so that we're not spending too much, because it can be a budget killer, and if too much of a percentage of your income is dedicated to this home purchase, it's gonna make living and making your budget work every month just that much harder, not to mention preventing you from reaching other financial goals

that you have. Yeah, Joe, I couldn't agree more a right, like housing like that is still the number one expense that we have built in our budgets every single month, So keeping tabs on that and making sure you're keeping that under control is so incredibly important. All right, Matt, I feel like that's nuts to bolts, that's beginning to end. That's how you buy a house, right, and you do it in a way that's effective, that's smart, that takes into account the big things and the little things to

put you in the best position to get a good deal. Yeah, that's right, man. So now you can just go out and buy a house. Do it. Just do it. It's that easy, all right, man. I'm gonna kick it back to the beer today. We are drinking Boulevard Brewing companies Space Camper, and I'll go ahead and say, the first thing I noticed about this can is it's got this redheaded lady on the front of it, and she looks like the girl from Wendy's Fast Food Wendy's, except she's

in some sort of cosmic space house. She's in the space suit. But if she'll serve me a burger and fries with this beer, perfect combo. What do you think about this beer? Yeah? I felt like this was Boulevards take on kind of the new style of I p A that's juicier, less bitter, less ALTI and it really did kind of straddle that line really nicely, this kind of beer that someone could go to as like an everyday drinker. I just want an I p A that's super good and super easy to drink. This beer kind

of encompasses that in my opinion. Yeah, it's only at five point nine alcohol, which, yeah, it's a it's a fairly lighter beer and it drinks lighter to it. It's pretty refreshing in a sense. So like you said, it's something that you can drink every day, and I'm totally with you. It doesn't have that West Coast bitterness, so it makes it really easy to drink super solid juicy. I totally dig it. Thanks to all of our friends out there at Boulevard Brewing Company and especially to Hillary

for sending these along. All right, Matt, let's get to our final thoughts for this episode of actually buying a home. And one of the most important things you need to consider is making a strong offer, and so I think we outlined pretty well what that means. There are a lot of little things you need to consider when placing your offer. Those small little things can be the difference between getting the house or not. And it's not always

even about offering the most money and really quickly. One of the most important things you want to make sure that you don't skip on during your due diligence period is the inspection. Having an inspection it basically gives you the footing to further negotiate down the offer price. There's gonna be things that you find that are gonna be wrong with a home, and to have that report that you can refer to point to and say, hey, like this is something that costs five thou dollars this, This

is gonna cost another two grade right here. Those are real dollars that you're going to be able to subtract from your purchase price. So make sure you pay for a solid inspection. Yeah, and a solid inspection might also reveal that the house has too many issues that you're just not willing to deal with, and it's a signal

to you to walk away. But ultimately, you don't want to be house poor, right, Spending too much on a home can be a budget killer, and having too much of a monthly obligation towards a home, even though owning your own home can provide such a sense of satisfaction and the potential to have longevity in one single place, I mean, there's a lot of beauty in owning a home. You also don't want to mortgage your financial future by

overpaying in order to get that sense of place. And keep in mind that the largest percentage of our monthly budget goes towards housing, so you want to make sure that you're reining in what you're willing to spend on your monthly mortgage because you want to make sure you have money that allows you to do other things. Like saving and investing, as well as just doing fun stuff like traveling and reaching your other financial goals. And so, like most things in life, you want to make sure

you find that balance. So Joel, that's gonna be it. For this episode, we will have our shown us up at how to money dot com. Be sure to check them out. And if you've enjoyed the show, we would love to hear from you. We'd love it if you would consider leaving a review on Apple Podcasts. And if you think that Matt and I have some room for improvement, go to how the Money dot com slash do better. We love to read your feedback there as well, and

here your constructive criticism. It just makes us better podcasters. That's right, man. So until next time, best Friends Out, Best Friends Out, bo