Buying a new home can be a complicated process, even for an individual who has owned a number of properties. Anyone who has recently purchase a home will tell you that there are many voices and many varying opinions out there. Before you were able to be comfortable with your decisions, you had to learn a lot of new information and sift through much conflicting information.

My wife and I recently bought a new home. So here are some lessions I learned that I will share with you:

1. Online resources are invaluable. You can check out your local government internet sites for important information on real estate transactions in your area. These sites will often have data about average home rates, neighbourhoods and school districts in the place you are considering. By finding out the recent real estate prices on these sites, we were not at the mercy of the data given to us by the real estate agent. Doing the research yourself will make you more knowledgeable about the market, which is key to making a good purchase.

2. Be realistic about how much you can spend. Try to buy a home in a price range that allows you to put down 20%. If you put down less than this, you will have to pay PMI (private mortgage insurance). PMI will protect the lender if you default. You don’t need this additional expense. If you scale down your expectations, that 20% may be attainable. You may not be capable to do it on your first home, but with any luck , you can on your second house. The profits from the sale of my condominium allowed my husband and I to have more than sufficient for the 20% down payment on our home. You may, however, want to put some of the proceeds from your home sale aside to cover unexpected moving expenses. We suggest that you do the same.

3. A good time to go shopping for a new home is throughout the winter. Around the holidays is even better. Since most folks just aren’t interested in buying a house when they are attempting to deal with the holidays, you can pretty much be one of the handful of buyers out there. We have found that throughout the winter and holidays, it’s a buyer’s market. Even in one of the hottest real estate markets in the country, we were able to under bid the asking price for several homes we looked at.

4. When looking for a mortgage loan company, choose a smaller firm. The smaller firms tend to have more personal service. The large, well known national firms are often the first ones people call because the names are well known. But the smaller sized, regional companies offer excellent customer service, and can often give you much better rates than the big companies. The smaller companies rely on word-of-mouth and don’t advertise so they have to do good work to keep their customers. We’ve tried both, but we selected the smaller company in the end because of their service and their rates.

5. Always have a house inspection. In a tough real estate market, it is tempting to skip the home inspection. It can be easy to purchase your dream house at a fire-sale price and overlook the inspection. It is not unusual to hear of people who have waived the inspection so they could snap up a good deal. They got the house – and right along with it they got several thousand dollars worth of problems that would have been found in an inspection. As a final note, try to remember that buying a home doesn’t have to be scary. It’s very exciting to own your own home, so think of all the good things that will come once you have made it through the home-buying process. If you follow the advice above, then you should be well-equipped to make it through unscathed.