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I thought I would share this to any first time home buyers.
1. Visit bank for pre-approval. Understand your budget and how much you can borrow. This is the key factor to determine how much you can afford. A lot of buyers skip this part and straight to the house hunting. You could waste a lot of time if you don't do this prior. Why is this important? One is that you save your time and two is that this will make your offer more attractive and likely to win.
2. Hire a Realtor. Know this, you are not paying any realtor fee on the buyer side. Buyer's Realtor takes commission from the seller. So why not benefit from that.
3. House tour. Your realtor will arrange the tour for you base on your criteria and schedule.
4. Write Offer. Once you have selected your dream place, it's time to write an offer. The offer will contain purchase price, condition, completion date, etc. Your realtor will help you determine what is the best price to place in order to win this.
5. Submit the offer. Your realtor will either send the offer to the seller's realtor OR physically present it for you in front of seller & seller's realtor. ALWAYS ask your realtor to physically go present. not all the realtor do this nowadays. I always do this for my client because this increase your chance to win the bid. Sometimes it's not all about the price, presentation is important too.
6. Counter Offer or Accept Offer or Reject. If there's multiple offer, then seller will choose one best offer to either accept or counter. The rest is auto-reject. You can counter as many time as you want on both side until it's accept or reject in the end.
7. Accepted Offer. Once offer is accepted by seller. Seller cannot regret at this point. You will not begin fulfill all the condition you had mentioned in your offer. The standard condition includes : condition to finance, condition to home inspection, condition to title search review, condition to site survey / all other condo/house related document review. There is also time limit set on each of these conditions, usually is a week of time.
8. Condition to Finance. If you had previously obtain the pre-approval from the bank as I mentioned in 1. , then you can directly remove the condition. If you can't get finance within the time you set in the contract, the contract will collapse. If this do happen, you can ask for extension from the seller.
9. condition to home inspection. If you know any inspector, you can start book time. If you don't, your realtor will suggest you 3 for you to choose. Once inspection is done, if there's repair required, you will negotiate with seller for repair.
10. condition to title search review. seller's realtor will send title search document to your realtor. You realtor will review and make sure two important things: 1. the name on the title search is the seller's name on the contract. 2. there's no charges. You will also review it after with your realtor and sign off
11. condition to other document regarding to house or condo. Same thing, to look for anything that is against the benefit of you.
12. all subject remove. When All subject are removed within the time specified, you will need to submit the deposit (usually 5% of purchase price) within 24 hours. At this point, the deal is consider firmed.
13. Find Lawyer/notary. You will find lawyer and provide him the contract. For the most case, your realtor will help you coordinating this. Your lawyer/notary will calculate the closing fee and ask you to sign 2 weeks prior.
14. Complete! On the day of completion, the title transfer to you. You will get the key and the house is now you to possess.
There are the basic outline. Hope it help you understand more about buying process in BC.
If you need any help in buy/sell/invest or simply just question, feel free to drop me a line in my email.
Howie
howiejao@kw.com