Back to the basics. David Sidoni is back with a glossary of all the “M” words you need to know when you are preparing to buy your first home.
AND A BONUS – Scam alert! How to spot real education websites from the ones just trying to sell you something. How to stay protected and keep your guard up while you dig deep into the matrix doing your research.
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First Time Home Buyers Terms And Definitions From A-Z – “M”
Glossary Of M Words That First Time Home Buyers Need To Know
We are going to be continuing the important glossary of terms that you should be familiar with before you set out to buy a home. I also have a spicy piece of internet scamming that I’m going to share with all of you. It’s happening right under our noses. This is a big one that you need to be aware of. For now, we’re going to start with M. Let’s get to it.
These are real estate terms and definitions for everybody trying to figure out how to buy a home. As you might have figured out, this is only episode M, so subscribe, like, and hit the notifications. We’ll tell you when we’ve got our next episode coming out. Everybody has different pieces that they need to learn when they’re looking to buy a house based on their specific situation. Get those notifications and you’ll find all the nuggets you need.
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This is a super crazy episode because although it is indeed covering the necessary albeit mundane task of teaching you the layman’s definitions for all of the M words that you need to know before you’re buying a home, there is also going to be a giant lesson that I learned while I was researching this information for you, but let’s get started.
Manufactured Housing
Our first M is Manufactured housing. These are homes that are built entirely in a factory in accordance with the Federal Building Code administered by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. Did you know that manufactured homes have a code? Manufactured homes might be single or multi-sectional and are transported from the factory to the site and then they’re installed.
The homes are permanently affixed to a foundation that often might be classified as real property under the applicable state law. That means the foundation is part of what you own, but with many manufactured homes, it also might be financed, which is not real property. It doesn’t mean it’s fake. It means that that land is leased and you don’t own it.
The home itself that is not permanently affixed to a foundation is generally classified as personal property. You can get a loan on that just like you can on a regular house. Sometimes the land underneath or the foundation underneath is something that you have to pay a monthly fee. As time goes on, you might not control exactly what that fee is and when it can be raised. It’s something you need to take into account when you’re looking at a manufactured home.
Margin
The next M is Margin. This one you heard about back in our L episode, the margin is part of a big equation that we use when we’re trying to calculate what your ARM, Adjustable Rate Mortgage interest rate is going to be. The margin is the percentage added to the index for that ARM. That will establish your interest rate for each adjustment date in your adjusting mortgage. If you remember from the L episode, this is what they add to the LIBOR which is now the SOFR. If you haven’t read Episode 130, I suggest you do that now to help this margin M word make sense.
Here’s the quick recap, an easy way to think about it is this, in an adjustable loan, your mortgage rate equals the index plus the margin. The margin, that’s the number of percentage points added to the index from what used to be the LIBOR now the SOFR. That margin number is created by the mortgage company and put in the original terms of your mortgage. They set the terms and that’s going to determine what your interest rate is on an adjustable-rate mortgage after the initial rate period ends. The margin is set in your loan agreement and it’s not going to change after the closing.
Market Value
Our next M is Market value. Let’s talk about market value because it seems to be what everybody talks about in real estate. It is not the list price. Market value is not what Zillow says. It’s not what the last model match home sold for. It’s not what the appraiser says. Did I get you on that one? I did, didn’t I? What is the market value?
There is a true definition and it sounds like economic mumbo jumbo, but this is the truth. The market value is the highest price that a ready, willing, and able, but not compelled to buy buyer would pay and the lowest price that a seller ready, willing, and able, but not compelled to sell would accept. That is real market value. Sometimes an appraiser is going to give you the market value that you need for a contract. The reality is that it’s still up to the buyer and the seller to determine through the negotiated contract.
Even beyond a second negotiation, after the appraisal comes in, if that appraised value is going to be honored in that deal, it can change. It could be higher or lower. The difference could be paid for by the buyer or the seller. It depends on how the two parties want to get together and try to close the deal no matter what the appraisal says. Therefore, the value could indeed be different from an appraisal. As far as market value goes, keep in mind, anyone can sell a home in any fashion they like regardless of what Zillow or the appraiser or the comparable homes say.
[bctt tweet=”People could put up a home for whatever price they want. And if someone’s willing to pay it, that is the market value.” via=”no”]
People could put up a home for whatever price they want if someone’s willing to pay it. That is the market value. That’s why you need to talk to a local unicorn pro, someone who knows all the story behind all the numbers in the neighborhood. People need to know where those market values came from. This is yet another reason why you should never look at Zestimates to tell you what you should offer on a home.
Maturity Date, Modification
Our next M is the Maturity date. According to my wife, I have not hit mine yet, but in real estate, it is the date on which a mortgage loan is scheduled to be paid in full as stated in the note. The maturity date is the day that you got to pay up. Modification is our next M, any change in the terms of a mortgage loan, including changes to the interest rate loan balance, or loan term. You might hear about loan modifications. That’s a whole different ball of wax that people do when they’re trying to avoid foreclosure, but you could still do a modification in several different ways without it being a complete loan modification.
Money Market Account
This next M isn’t necessarily a real estate term, but I’m throwing it in for good measure. It’s a Money market account. If you haven’t saved money for long, maybe you don’t know or you realize that savings accounts get you 8*** when it comes to the interest that you make on it. A lot of people are looking for other things like CDs, stocks, or any other kind of saving program. A lot of those are not liquid. Liquid means you can’t pull it out right away.
A money market account is something that you can use. It’s a type of investment in which funds are unsecured with short-term securities. These are great to use when you’re saving for your home because you get a little bit more interest, but the money can be liquified immediately. I know the term is liquidated. I just like to say liquified.
Monthly Expenses
Next M is Monthly expenses. I can’t believe I have to do this one for you, but I’m going to break it down anyway. I told you I was going to give you all the kindergarten definitions no matter what. Monthly expenses are how much you spend every month. It can include but is not limited to recurring obligations like your rent or your mortgage payment, utilities, car payments, child support payments, alimony, insurance payments, as well as your essentials, like food and groceries, and for me, tennis shoes. Most of these obligations will have a fixed due date.
Mortgage And The Scam Of The Industry
This brings us to the M that you have all been waiting for, Mortgage. The M-word mortgage also brings us to the gigantic scam. Time to get serious. When I was doing the research on all the things that you need to know from A to Z for buying a home, I googled 1 million different websites, as well as used all the resources I’ve had over many years.
One of the top websites I found was Quicken Loans and Rocket Mortgage, two giant online lenders. They’ve merged because they’re all on the same page. What I found was this, one of the top URLs for helping people who are trying to figure out how to do this is a page called 73 Terms to Know in 2022 brought to you by Quicken Loans and Rocket Mortgage. They’re playing like they’re your friend.
You probably heard of them because Rocket Mortgage is the one with all the Super Bowl commercials. According to their own shareholder’s report in August 2022, they made $1.4 billion in net revenue for the quarters leading up to August 2022 but their net income was just $60 million. They spent $1.34 billion to make $60 million. You go to their website, that’s supposed to be educating you on 73 terms that you need to know in 2022.
This is what it looks like when you get to their M section, A, B, C, D, E, F, G, they’ve got 3 or 4 different terms for each of them, but when you get to M, there’s just one word, mortgage. It has a button for you to apply for a loan. That’s it. No other M terms that you need to know. This is coming to you from this site that is supposedly there to help educate you with 73 terms that you need to know in 2022. The reason I point this out is to let you understand it. There is a sophisticated level of selling and marketing that is being directed right at you, the first-time home buyer.
These guys are spending $1.34 billion last quarter so they can make stuff like this, get to the top of Google so that you will click on their page and then you’ll become a customer. You’ll get their inferior, non-customer-friendly service. The bottom line is that you are being attacked. They’re preying on your impatience, knowing that you’re going to be wildly disappointed when you see the absolute lack of quality information out there. When you’re trying to find legit quality information for first-time home buyers, there isn’t much. When you find this at the top of Google, maybe you think that’s all you’ve got
This is happening on a grand scale. I cannot begin to explain it to you. This is one of the thousands of examples that I’ve found. This is not a conspiracy. This is real. There are real-life Illuminati playing puppet masters with you and your hard-earned money. I share this with you because I want you to stay protected. The real estate industry has been ignoring you for years because they’re living in the dark ages and they’re so greedy. They don’t see the value of serving first-time home buyers.
The new online lenders know this. They’re spending this obscene amount, an unfathomable amount of money right now because they think they can dominate down the line. They don’t mind losing money because they’re sowing seeds for the future. They’re hoping that all the first-time buyers out there find little information that they’ll jump in line like good little lemmings and become brainwashed internet children.
I got to tell you straight from my gut, this is blatant and obvious how you’re being screwed. I am truly shocked to my core that no one else is pulling back the curtain and revealing this to you. It’s not because there are good people out there. It’s because someone else could do this and find a way to benefit by pointing out how crappy they are. It amazes me that no one greedy has figured out, “I can go after the people who have a conscious and don’t like being screwed.” We’re here. The revolution is started here on this show to protect you. The revolution wants to help you see that the so-called list was made to “help” you.
Mortgage
As we can plainly see, it’s not helping at all. For now, let’s ignore the $1.34 million scam and give you the rest of the real M list. Mortgage. In some states, this can be talking about the actual piece of paper, the documents that pledge what we call real property, such as a home, pledges that to the lender as a security for the repayment of the debt. Real property is a term that we use for the property. The stuff inside is called personal property. Don’t freak out when you hear the term real property. It’s not because there’s a fake property out there somewhere. It’s an old-school real estate term. The realtors are acting like old-school dinosaurs. They still haven’t updated it.
Talking about mortgage, the definition that you probably know is the more esoteric term, which means the entire entity, the idea, and the service of what is a lien on the property. That secures the property to repay the loan. It’s an agreement between you and the lender that allows you to borrow money to purchase or refinance a home. It gives the lender the right to take your property if you fail to repay the money that you’ve borrowed.
Fancy Google terms for, “It’s a loan, you don’t pay, they foreclose.” Technically, it is a loan that is secured by using your home as collateral. It may also be used to indicate the amount of money that you owe with interest on the purchase of your home. How much is left on your mortgage? That’s the amount of the purchase price minus your down payment, plus any payments that you’ve made.
Mortgage Banker
Our next M is Mortgage banker, a term that you might hear. It refers to an individual firm or a corporation that originates, sells, and/or services loans secured by mortgages on real property. Originates term you’re going to hear when they’re talking about mortgages is it means that they’re going to offer the product, charge you a fee for that, and then sell you the loan.
Many of them resell the loans to secondary mortgage lenders like Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, which we talked about in the F episode. If you’re a Homie, you’ve heard me talk about this a lot. Mortgage brokers are different from mortgage bankers though some mortgage brokers also can be mortgage bankers. As a broker, it means they’re going to offer other products as well.
A broker is an individual or firm that will bring the borrower and the lenders together for the purpose of loan origination. Their actual title is the person or the firm that originates and processes loans for a number of different lenders, giving you the options for different prices and different terms. What they’re going to do is they’re going to take the application from you, but they’re going to **** you out to all the other lenders and investors to get you the best deal. It’s a means to an end.
Because you have choices, you can shop through them to get the best deal, whereas a mortgage banker, they’re more like an arranged marriage. You don’t have much choice in the matter. I’ve never used that analogy before. I can’t believe that popped into my head. I like it, although I’m sure that the mortgage brokers that I’ve been recommending for years, they’re not going to be thrilled that I reduced them to pimps. Again, we’re fighting $1.34 billion paid in the last quarter to lure you in. The truth might not be pretty.
Mortgage Insurance
Our next M is Mortgage insurance. This is one that I get questions about all the time. If you’ve never heard of it before, I’ll get you educated. If you have heard of it, Mortgage Insurance is known as MI or PMI, or sometimes MIP which is the Mortgage Insurance Premium that you pay every single month. It’s the same thing. It’s insurance that you pay that protects the lenders against the losses that could be caused by a borrower, that’s you, defaulting on the loan. That’s the real reason for it. It’s insurance that you pay to them because you didn’t put 20% down on the home and they want to make sure that if you bail on the house, they’re still covered.
MI, PMI, or MIP is typically required if your down payment’s less than 20% of the purchase price. You pay it extra little insurance fee monthly as long as you pay your monthly mortgage. You’re either going to pay it to a government agency, the Federal Housing Administration, FHA, or to a Private Mortgage Insurance company, that’s the PMI. That’s why you’re going to hear both PMI and MI, but they’re pretty much the same thing. It’s just paid to different people.
I’ve been doing this for several years and I know people find the show at different times in their journey. I know people back in 2019 weren’t even thinking about buying a home. I’ve got 130-something episodes, so there’s no way you’re going to read them all. I’m going to say it once and for all and refer people back to this. This is the absolute way to think about mortgage insurance and PMI. It’s not for everyone, but it’s not as scary as people are saying. Let this sink in because many first-time buyers lose tens, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars listening to old-school Boomer philosophies about PMI that scare them and make them that they’re dangerous.
[bctt tweet=”PMI is not dangerous. It is a tool to help people get into home ownership.” via=”no”]
I’ve been doing this for many years and I could tell you that PMI is not dangerous. It is a tool to help people get into home ownership. Let’s take the average home now, around $400,000. If you got $80,000 cash, sweet, you avoided PMI. You got 20% down. What if you don’t have $80,000 cash? What if you do have 5% down? What if you’ve got $20,000? If you can afford a 5% down payment on a home and you have a solid long-term plan on values and the time that you think you’re going to spend in this home, then you could buy a home using MI or PMI at only about $91 a month, or you could keep renting until you save up $60,000.
If you’ve only got $20,000 now, I have no idea how long it’s going to take you to save another $60,000 to get to 20%. What I’ve been telling people for years is that PMI right now at $91 a month is simply a loan to yourself. You’re loaning yourself $60,000 at the price of $91 a month. You don’t waste all those years on rent. This is the truth. Let’s get real on this. If you need to save more than a year to save that $60,000 to get that 20% full down payment, I guarantee you that your rent is going to be up way more than $91 a month while you’re saving. Imagine where it’s going to go if you’ve got to save for 2, 3, 4, or 5 years.
By getting a home using that PMI for $91 a month, you’re going to be saving money over the next 2, 3, 4, or 5 years because your monthly payment will stay fixed. You’re going to start paying down your principal on the home with your mortgage payments instead of 100% of your monthly payment. That rent payment is going to nothing while you’re trying to save that $60,000 so you can avoid the terrible PMI, $91 a month.
There is another important thing about PMI. Not only will you be getting in for only $91 a month and paying down the principal, but it’s important that you understand that you’re paying down the principal because there’s a formula with the PMI. PMI and MI can be dropped from your loan once you reach an 80% LTV, Loan-To-Value, on your home. Technically, it’s 78%, but if you bug them enough, when you get to 80%, you’ve been making payments on time, most of the time, they’re going to drop it when you hit 80%.
For those of you who don’t know what LTV is, go back and read our L episode. If you put 20% down, you’re already at an 80% LTV. If you put 5% down, you’re starting at a 95% LTV. What I’m telling you is that $91 a month, you do not pay that for the full 30 years on the loan. It’s going to be much shorter than that. Much less money was paid overall for the privilege of being able to buy a home early with a low down payment. It works like this. 5% down means a 95% LTV. Your LTV gets lower by you making payments down on the principal. Each payment you have reduces the principal. It also gets lower when you gain equity in the home.
The way it works is that in the first five years if you pay the minimum monthly payment, that means you’re going to pay down $28,649.83 of the principal. Again, based on the estimated numbers, $400,000 house at a 5.5% loan. Don’t tell me I’m not giving you the real detailed information. That $28,649.83 is another 7.1% off of your Loan-To-Value, your LTV. Now you add that to your 5% down payment, suddenly you’re sitting at 87.9% LTV. You’re getting close to that 80% to 78% where you can dump it. That means you’re about 10% off there.
What if in the same time, your home appreciates in value by 10%? Either in the market moving up that much in that five-year period or in the home improvements that you’ve made on the house, which will increase the value. You call your bank and you have your MI or your PMI removed now that you are below the 80% to 78% needed to drop it. In this scenario, the reality of this terrible PMI is that you’re paying $91 a month in your MI or PMI or $1,092 each year or $1,092 a year for five years for a grand total of $5,460 over five years to loan yourself $60,000 worth of down payment needed to avoid that PMI. That’s $5,460 or $91 a month for five years to become a homeowner.
I’d say that’s a great deal. Stop paying rent and live in control with a fixed monthly housing payment. I could go on and on about this. I did in Episode 69 and a whole bunch of others, but the math there spells it out. PMI is not the devil. It’s not a reason to wait to buy a home. You might think you’re saving money, but this is a new world. Rents are stupid. It’s going to cost you much more to wait things out as a renter and try to save up to 20%.
Mortgage Modification
Our next M is a Mortgage modification. A lot of these terms get thrown out before. I just want to make sure you’ve heard of them before. Mortgage modification sometimes happens like this, a loss mitigation option. That’s what a mortgage modification is. It allows you, the borrower, to refinance or extend the terms of your mortgage, thus reducing your monthly payment. In times of crisis, if you get in trouble, always look for some mortgage modification rather than stopping, paying, and going into foreclosure.
Mortgage Points, Mortgage Pre-approval Letter
Here’s another big one that people have asked me about a lot that I’m excited to get into. I’m excited to talk about this. Mortgage points or sometimes often referred to as discount points. If you’re going to use this or not, fine. It doesn’t matter to me, but this is something that you should know and understand, especially if you’ve got some extra cash upfront when you’re doing your deal. You can put all 30% down, but did you know that you can use some of that cash to do what we call buy-down points?
Right at the beginning, you don’t have to take the rate they give you. You can pay with some extra cash upfront to lower your interest rate. There are a few different ways you can do it. You can do it for a temporary period or the entire life of the loan. It depends. Think about that. Mortgage points. They’re called discount points. You can pay the lender and you usually pay them at the closing. They can buy down your rate.
Like PMI, you can choose to avoid even thinking or understanding anything about the definition of mortgage points or discount points. You might potentially lose some big savings if you don’t understand it. I recommend expanding your mind a little bit and realizing that sometimes if done correctly, you can pay a little bit of extra to take advantage of unique situations that will save you tens of thousands over the long haul.
Our next one’s a Mortgage preapproval letter. If you’re brand new to the show and you know nothing about buying a home, please read. Those online lenders and all the predatory people out there that are trying to get you to use their horrible service, everybody on the internet tells you that you need a mortgage preapproval letter. Let me tell you about a mortgage preapproval letter. You should get one at some point.
Most people are going to say you need them to write an offer. However, a mortgage preapproval letter on its own is useless. I’m talking wipe your *** with the piece of paper. Do you need to get preapproval before you buy a home? Yes. Why is a preapproval letter toilet paper? It shows me if I’m trying to represent the person selling the house or anyone who’s trying to represent the people selling the house that you as a buyer have no clue about this process. It shows me that you are just starting with your financial questions. Not the kind of buyer that I’m going to run to tell my seller about. That’s because there are steps well beyond a preapproval letter.
A lender can do it in a fifteen-minute phone call with anybody. All you have to do is tell them stuff. They punch in the numbers. With zero documentation and zero validation, they’re going to send you a pre-approval letter. It looks all official and you don’t know what’s going on with this whole process. You think it’s real. It is not. That’s the real, real on that. What you need is a prequalification letter. Mortgage approvals are garbage. A mortgage pre-qualification with documentation and validation that sweep the nation is the dealio.
[bctt tweet=”Mortgage pre-approvals are garbage. A mortgage pre-qualification with documentation and validation that sweeps the nation? That is the dealio.” via=”no”]
Mortgage Rate, Mortgage Refinance
Nothing more to say on that. Let’s go to the next one, the Mortgage rate. What’s that? It’s the interest rate you pay to borrow the money to buy your house. Next up is a Mortgage refinance. A lot of people ask me all the time, “What’s a refinance?” It should be in the R’s, but I put it under the M’s because it’s a Mortgage refinance. You are not stuck with the interest rate that you get on your 30-year loan for the rest of your life.
In fact, there are a bunch of lenders out there that make their living refinancing people at better rates, which oddly enough is another reason that you need to be careful because when you’re choosing your lender to do your loan purchase, there are a ton of lenders in 2022 and into 2023 that are going to be getting out of the business because they’ve only been doing refinances for the last few years and they don’t know Jack cheese about a purchase.
That’s what you’re trying to do. Their rates have been so low that a bunch of lenders has been doing refinances. If you want to understand how this can work for you in the future, the Google definition is that a mortgage refinance is when you take out a new loan to pay off and then replace your own loan. Usually obviously so that you can get a better rate or sometimes so you can get cash out of your home, which I recommend if you’re using it to fix up your home and increase the value of your property. Please, don’t do a refinance to cash out and buy a boat or a second car. That’s what happened in 2008. That’s how everybody got upside down. That’s the real reason there was a housing crash back then.
The good news is that the banks aren’t going to let you do it as easily as they did back then. Hopefully, you also listen to me. A lot of people love this because if you refinance, you can also get a lower payment monthly. That’s a cool thing. Here’s a big bonus tip. A lot of times, they’ll do these refinances for low fees, sometimes even nothing because the bank wants to redo and give the new loan to you.
Here’s an even better fact. The fees, if there are any, they’re not that big a deal because you could have with a refinance, that gap that you had when you bought the home the first time, which is you might be 30 or 45 days without a mortgage payment while it’s going through a refinance. Whatever fees there are, you can take that month’s mortgage payment and put that into the fees. It’s a freebie. It’s pretty cool.
Mortgage Term
Next up is the Mortgage term. The term of the mortgage loan is how long you have to repay the loan. It’s the number of years that you’re going to pay before you fully own your home just like your car. You don’t own it until you make the last payment. Most of the time, mortgage terms are 15 or 30 years. When it comes to paying off your loan, you’re going to hear tons of opposite, different opinions on paying your loan off early versus paying it at the minimum. This is totally up to you. I do want you to understand how this works. If you bought a home now and you borrowed at 5.5%, you can put the extra money towards the loan to pay it off early.
The reason why some people like to do that is that the interest that you pay over 30 years on a $400,000 purchase is 5.5%. It’s another $400,000. If you pay the minimum for 30 years, you’re paying $800,000 for the $400,000 loan. This is why people are out there freaking out about paying the minimum for 30 years. Bear in mind, that’s the math now. A lot can happen in 30 years, whether it’s refinancing or paying stuff down, buying, or selling. There are probably multiple different situations that are going to happen and you could start paying this off earlier. I pray to God that you’re going to be getting a raise in the next 30 years.
Mortgagee and Mortgagor
Our next M term, Mortgagee and Mortgagor. I do this for a living. It’s taken me years to figure out which one is which, whether it’s the mortgagee or the mortgagor or the grantee or the grantor or the lessee or the lessor. A long time ago, I got myself this mnemonic device. It was when I was a renter. I remembered that the lessee, that was me. The ones with the E, that’s me, the person trying to live there. The mortgagee or the grantee, the lessee, that’s me. If you’re a pessimistic person and you don’t want to use the mnemonic device, I do remember one time when I hated my landlord that he was the lessor.
MLS
Our big old last M is MLS. this is a big one if you’re trying to buy a house. Once again, not in the M terms from Quicken and Rocket. They decided you don’t need to know that M term. Sketchy scammers. The MLS is a basic term you need to know. MLS stands for Multiple Listing Service. Major League Soccer stole it from us. We had it first. It’s a service provided by the local board of realtors.
InMan.com is an exclusive industry publication. I pay for it so I can bring you thrilling data like this. According to them, there are over 600 MLS organizations in the United States. MLS is a database that allows real estate agents and broker members to access and add information about all the properties in an area and all the things that are for sale. The way that a home gets listed so someone can sell it is it gets logged into the MLS by a listing agent.
All the sites that you use, the public real estate sites, Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, Realtor.com, all get their information from the local MLSs. Six hundred MLSs and the big fancy sites that you guys use, they pull from the MLSs. The information originates in the MLSs and then Zillow and Redfin grab it from them. Way to go, realtors in general.
The MLS tech, the sites and their user-friendliness, it **** because it’s made by realtors and paid for by realtors. Zillow and Redfin have spent billions to create a much better site. They’re much more user-friendly. Keep in mind, when you’re working with a local unicorn realtor, they’re going to have direct access to the MLS. There is some information in there that is not on the public sites.
It’s the place to go for all the real dirty information and something that you should have somebody on your side looking to see what’s going on with each individual listing. There’s a whole section on lots of MLSs that it’s realtor to realtor. In the past, I’ve had tons of buyers who call me up because they found a home on Zillow. I go onto my local MLS and I read in the private remarks, realtor to realtor, the stuff that doesn’t get published on the public sites. It’s specifically called private remarks. That’s where I discover the seller wants to do a rent back for six months.
I’ll look up the realtor and find out that the realtor only sold two homes in the last ten years. I’ll find out that the seller wants to sell it but they have a renter in there who has a lease for the next eighteen months. I’ll find out that they raised chickens in the living room for the last eight years. Does the last one sound made up? It’s not.
Make sure you’re working with a local unicorn realtor because then you’re going to get access to all the important information, which is only there on the MLS. That’s it. There you go. These are the basics. Shockingly, it’s more than one M word. All the things that you need to be aware of to help you navigate the crazy complex world of buying a home. It’s a crazy complex world, but once you get all this stuff under your belt, it’s not that complicated. Educate yourself.
There’s a lot more information @HowToBuyAHome on TikTok and at the How to Buy a Home Podcast on YouTube. Seriously, if you haven’t checked out the YouTube page for some great information, get on there and subscribe. If you’re serious about buying a home, get home, watch your shows, binge what you want to watch, but take your laptop or your tablet and your bed and watch a twenty-minute YouTube video before you go to bed.
There’s education in there that is important for people to understand so you feel comfortable and not confused by the process. Share the YouTube and the show with all your friends and family who need to know this, too. Once your friends and family get all this real information and are armed with the real estate vocabulary, they can do this. You can do this.
Important Links
- L episode – Past Episode
- 73 Terms to Know in 2022 brought to you by Quicken Loans and Rocket Mortgage
- F episode – Past Episode
- Episode 69 – Past Episode
- InMan.com
- Realtor.com
- @HowToBuyAHome – TikTok
- How to Buy a Home Podcast – YouTube
This podcast was started for YOU, to demystify things for first time home buyers, and help crush the confusion. After helping first timers for over 13 years, I knew there wasn’t t a lot of clear, tangible, useable information out there on the internet, so I started this podcast. Help me spread the word to other people just like you, dying for answers. Tell your friends, family, and perhaps that random neighbor you REALLY want to move out about How to Buy a Home! A really easy way is to hit the share button and text it to your friends. Go for it, help someone out. And if you’re not already a regular listener, subscribe and get constant updates on the market. If you are a regular and learned something, help me help others – give the show a quick review in Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts, or write a review on Spotify. Let’s change the way the real estate industry treats you first time buyers, one buyer at a time, starting with you – and make sure your favorite people don’t get screwed by going into this HUGE step blind and confused. Viva la Unicorn Revolution!
Instagram @DavidSidoni
Tik Tok @howtobuyahome