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    Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home
    Unavailable
    Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home
    Unavailable
    Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home
    Ebook686 pages7 hours

    Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home

    By Ilona Bray, Alayna Schroeder and Marcia Stewart

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Everything a buyer needs to know to buy a first home, with insider tips and advice from the experts!

    Rental prices have gone through the roof, more homes are coming up for sale, and buying a home remains a sound investment. But how do you know whether you’re ready? And what steps should you take in the weeks or months ahead to find, buy, and move into your new home? Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home will help you find the right place to live and invest in -- and enjoy the process, too.

    Filled with interesting facts, real-life stories and insights, and common pitfalls to avoid, this book provides everything you need to select the right type of home, the right mortgage, the right agent, the right inspections -- and much more. Get the inside scoop on:
    • deciding between a house, condo, co-op, or townhouse
    • exploring your local market for the best value
    • creating and managing a realistic homebuying budget
    • qualifying for and securing loan financing
    • getting the right inspections and insurance
    • negotiating with sellers or new home builders
    • successfully closing the deal, and more.
    Read through the real-world experiences of over 20 first-time homebuyers, as well as valuable insights from a team of 13 real estate professionals, including:
    • real estate brokers
    • attorneys who specialize in real estate
    • a home inspector
    • a neighborhood researcher
    • a mortgage specialist
    • and more!
    The 6th edition of Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home is fully updated to reflect the dramatically changed U.S. housing market, with emphasis on how to assess the state of your local market and local homes’ true worth before making an offer and negotiating the terms of the deal. Download forms for book at Nolo.com
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherNOLO
    Release dateDec 30, 2016
    ISBN9781413323467
    Unavailable
    Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home
    Author

    Ilona Bray

    Ilona Bray, J.D. is an award-winning author and legal editor at Nolo, specializing in immigration law, real estate, and nonprofit fundraising. Many of her books are consistent Nolo bestsellers, among them Effective Fundraising for Nonprofits, U.S. Immigration Made Easy, and Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home. She particularly enjoys interviewing people and weaving their stories into her books. Bray's working background includes solo practice, nonprofit, and corporate stints, as well as long periods of volunteering, including an internship at Amnesty International's main legal office in London. She received her law degree and a Master's degree in East Asian (Chinese) Studies from the University of Washington. In her spare time she enjoys writing children’s books, going to open houses, and gardening.

    Read more from Ilona Bray

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    Reviews for Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home

    4/5

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    • 4/5
      The promotion of this book through the ER program was very timely for me, because I'm in the middle of my first home purchase. The book sets out all the steps of home-buying, from deciding what you want through settling in. Some parts are more helpful than others; I didn't need assistance deciding what I wanted, for example, but I can see where for some people the book might raise issues they hadn't thought of. I liked that the book explained the steps of financing, inspection, and other nitty-gritty details in clear language but with enough specificity to be useful. I don't think this should be a home-buyer's sole resource because too many things vary by state law and local practice, but overall, I found the book's description of the whole process to be very consistent with my experience. The book includes a number of checklists to use when going to open houses, looking for an agent, going to the inspection, etc. This is a good idea, but I think the checklists could be more detailed and contain more information. The included disk has all the checklists, which is a nice feature, because then you can print them to take with you rather than having to try to copy pages out of the book.
    • 4/5
      I am in the middle of home buying when I received this book, including mortgages, looking for a home, etc. I'm at the stage where I just have to find one...Anyway, I paged through this book. The advice was solid, the writing easy to understand. I think this is an excellent book for first time home buyers. And it spurred me into really pursuing a house (I'm a bit scared about buying a home...)Highly Recommended.
    • 5/5
      I was really excited to see this offered as a LibraryThing Early Reviewer option since I have begun to consider the possibility of buying a house, but have felt at a complete loss of where to start. Then, after I won it and received the book, I put off starting it feeling a little intimidated and afraid that it might be boring and difficult.Nothing could be further from the truth. While some parts certainly interested me more than others, the writing was accessible and the explanations clear. Two of the authors are lawyers, and they do a good job of explaining general law in layman's terms, even while stressing differences by state. Of course, since the subject matter is so broad, no one chapter can cover every option or every situation; furthermore, since laws are different from state to state, there are going to be individual differences. But this book lays excellent general groundwork for the ins and outs of home buying. The authors primarily focus on the purchase of a single-family home, though from time to time special situations like a new home from a developer or a co-op is considered. Each chapter introduces one aspect of purchasing a house, such as creating your wishlist, how to assemble your "team" (real estate agent, attorney, mortgage broker, etc.) and what each of them do, and how to finance your purchase. What could become dry facts and figures is broken up by real life stories, tips, worksheets (there are a few short examples in the text, with directions to look at the complete one on the CD-ROM included), and more. I especially enjoyed the "Best Thing We Ever Did" features in which something that could have been abstract, like getting a home inspection, translated into something practical by showing how someone truly benefited from it. As a result of reading, I'm feeling more comfortable understanding such things as what a mortgage broker does, and what I might need to do to see if I'm in a position to buy now or later. I will be able to ask more intelligent questions and not feel completely lost. Though the earlier chapters have much more relevance to my current situation, I'm sure that I will refer to the book as I come closer to truly be in a position to buy.
    • 4/5
      I read this book before buying my first home and found it generally useful in understanding the process and legal aspects of home ownership. If you've already bought homes before, this is probably a good reminder of the process if it's been a while.
    • 4/5
      I requested this book because I hope to be able to make use of it in the next couple of years, and found it to be a useful tool. It's filled with instructions for every stage of buying a house from deciding if it would be a worthwhile purchase to rebuilding your finances afterward, along with sample forms, worksheets, and interview questions for the various professionals you deal with when buying a house. These are duplicated on the included CD. The tone is lightened with sidebars such as real-estate fiction and house themed music with which to celebrate your purchase. I'm sure this book will make the process much easier when the time comes.
    • 5/5
      I picked this book out of the early review offerings because I was about to get my permanent residency in the USA. My green card and this book arrived at my apartment in the same week, and I've been happy with both. I've always resisted buying a house (not wanting to be tied down), but recent conversations have convinced me that it's not an iron chain. This book is continuing the reassurances, and demystifying the process. The language is plain and easy to understand, many experts were consulted on the various steps of home buying, it's very logically ordered, and it has very useful lists of questions to ask of the people with whom you'll work on your house purchase. It comes with a CD filled with forms and extra material as well. My only quibble is that they don't go into a lot of specific details regarding the differences in the process between states, that would have made for some perfect footnotes.
    • 4/5
      I got this book through LibraryThing Early Reviewers, and I recommend it to others. I'm not in the market for a house right this minute, but I have been considering it and beginning to do research. This book was a big help. It has a few details about many topics. Some of these topics were totally irrelevant to me (I don't live in a place with co-ops; I don't want a condo or a house that isn't built yet), but others were right on point. Note: I didn't try out the CD of forms and interviews that comes with the book, but I can see how some of them (not all) might be useful.The book did a decent job of balancing perspectives on whether you should even buy a house right now or not -- considering that it is, indeed, a guide to buying. I think it could have had a stronger message that buying isn't right in all circumstances, but given the type of book it is, it was pretty good. It talked about different strategies for cold and hot markets, too.The book emphasizes the importance of choosing a good team of pros to assist you: your realtor, mortgage broker, attorney, inspector, etc. I wish it had had more details on HOW to choose such people, especially in an area where you don't know people to get referrals from. There could have been more details on short sales and bank-owned homes, given how common they are these days, but there was certainly sufficient information to get started understanding these topics and know what more to ask about.I think some of the extraneous stuff could've been cut: decorating your new home on a budget? Really? But again, I think this book has just enough information to let someone like me know which parts of the home-buying process they do understand, and which parts one might need to find more resources to really get a handle on. I will absolutely use this book when I am actively searching for my first house!
    • 4/5
      This isn't the type of book that you would sit down and read cover to cover. When buying a house there are scenarios that are not applicable and can be perused and other areas in which one would read completely for full comprehension. Since my husband and I are looking into buying hopefully within the next year we found the book to be very useful and easy to understand. It is basically a step by step guide for those who know very little about buying a home. It would be the ideal reference book if you are just starting out. The only criticism we had on the book was that it didn't go into the types of mortgages as deeply as it could have. That being said- it is well worth a starter read and to keep on hand for reference as well as the toolkit of forms and worksheets.
    • 3/5
      It was really informative and easy to read. It also didn't get overly complicated like many help books can be. It helped me to think about a few things I never would have thought of. I would recommend it to anyone going through the process.
    • 4/5
      This is the sort of book you dip into, not the sort of book you read straight through, but it's still well worth the money. Some of the material at the beginning of the book (about figuring out how much house you can afford) was too basic and simplistic for me, but I suppose in a book like this it's better to be overly simplistic than to assume your readers know anything.We found the "questions to ask a buyer's agent / home inspector / mortgage lender" to be extremely useful, as well as the explanation of all the complicated terminology and the many steps in the process. The little "smartest thing we ever did" anecdotes were amusing -- especially because they frequently contradicted each other, emphasizing that every home purchase is different.My wife and I selected this book out of the shelf of homebuying books because it was recent (post-bubble) and because it specifically mentions domestic partners in several places. (The hypothetical homebuyers in the little explanatory bits include same-sex couples and single people, which was a nice touch -- it's nice to not have to see George and Mary over and over and over again as the people everyone is supposed to identify with!)
    • 5/5
      We're planning on buying a house next year, so I got this book from the library so I could get a head start on knowing what's involved and what we'll be getting ourselves into. After reading it, I feel so much less overwhelmed by the idea, and much more informed about the whole process - I can't even begin to say how much I learned from this book. I'd recommend it in a heartbeat to anyone thinking about buying a house, and I'll definitely be purchasing my own copy of the new edition when it comes out in January.
    • 5/5
      This guide is a must for every first-time homebuyer. It has information on every step of the process, and it provides links to resources where individuals can find information more specific to their particular situations. The CD-ROM of forms is an added bonus. As someone who will be looking to buy a home in the next 3 years, I know I will be referring to this book frequently!
    • 4/5
      Nolo’s Essential Guide for Buying Your First home was extremely helpful. I did not know where to begin that was accessible. Overall it will make my first home buying experience much easier.attention many things I would not have thought to look for. It was user friendly with language and it gave guidelines, forms, and the pros and cons of different options. It also brought to