It’s Halloween and instead of giving you bite-sized candy, your host David Sidoni is going to give you bite-sized FUN FACTS about buying your first home. Learn why credit score matters, what a bridge loan is, or why apps shouldn’t be trusted. Join David as he gives some stories and important lessons on why buying a house is all about timing. Find your own very special realtor unicorn out there to help you with all your troubles. Listen to this episode for all the fun facts and avoid all the spooky scary parts of buying your first home.
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Fun Facts – Random Listener Questions For First Time Home Buyers At All Levels
Bite-Sized Answers To The Question – How Do You Buy Your First Home?
Buying your first home might not be the right thing for you to do but do you want to do it someday? Probably since you’re here. Good luck figuring out where to begin because most of the information out there stinks. The industry doesn’t want to advertise to you and they just don’t. You’re not their goal. You’re a pawn in their game. A pawn to sacrifice. Most realtors’ ultimate goal is selling homes. Let’s get you the info you need to beat the system.
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Welcome to the show. You probably have a nickname for me by making fun of me and I’m down with that. I want you to send me those nicknames making fun of me at [email protected] and I’ll post them out on the next episode. Those of you guys have been reading to for a while, I’m pushing these out as fast as I can. As you know, if you’ve read in the library, I don’t start rambling whatever’s on my mind. It’s not that kind of show. This show has a mission. It’s to educate you in the best way possible. What I decided to do is put together a whole bunch of little pieces for you that are going to help you.
It’s Halloween of 2021 so I thought maybe I’d give you some fun-sized, tiny versions like everyone does out. When you go trick or treating, they give you those fun-size tiny candies, except that one person down the street. My house was Ms. Wilson. She always gave the big, full-sized candy. That’s what I usually give you but I’m going to give you fun-size facts, bite-size pieces of home buying wisdom, along with some reader’s questions and stories that are going to help you make this happen.
Job For A Home
Fun fact, number one, did you know that you need a job to buy a home? Who’s pissed off thinking, “Fun facts or a way to talk condescendingly to me for 30 minutes. You suck.” I want to explain some of the things about this to you because a lot of people don’t check into this because they’re too concerned about needing a job to get a home. The easiest and simplest way, which is the way that most old-timers or Google searches are going to tell you is that you need a W-2 or W-4 job because those are the easiest to calculate but 1099 jobs they can and do get home loans as well.
In general, you’re going to hear from people that you need a job for two years but a new job in the same field. If you switch but you’ve been more than two years, it still counts, even if it’s a brand new job. If you’re getting a new job sometimes all you need is one paycheck to show that you’ve got that new job. Sometimes they’ll take a sales contract or an offer letter.
If you’re buying and selling sneakers, action figures online and that’s your main source of income, all you entrepreneurs out there, I don’t care how much money you’ve got in the bank, in Bitcoin or underneath your mattress. If you would like a bank to give you a big fat loan to go along with your big fat annual salary, you have to report some of that income that you make. It sucks but you’re going to have to report and show a large enough annual salary on some tax return. If you don’t file your taxes, skip to the end of the show and do that.
You entrepreneurs are out there have to report what annual income you have. You can’t show them a big fat bank account and say, “I got a $100,000 in the bank. Give me a $600,000 loan.” They’re going to say, “Where’d you get that money? Are you going to continue to make that money?” You’ve got to have a tax return that shows it, especially if you’re 1099, an entrepreneur person who doesn’t have a pay stub or you don’t have a new contract with a new job offer.
[bctt tweet=”If you’re getting a new job, sometimes all you need is just one paycheck to show that you’ve got that new job.” username=””]
Credit Scores Matter
Next fun fact, credit scores matter. Those free credit scores that come on an app or someplace online usually come with a catch. We’ve got a lot of big tips on episodes 3, 8 and episode 56 has a super hack that might work for some of you. I’m not sure if I mentioned this to you but suddenly in 2021, the credit score apps, they’re starting to put out commercials, giving you a pro tip that I gave back in episode 3 or episode 8 in 2019. It says that you’ve got multiple different credit scores. I haven’t seen it very often. It’s the only one of the commercials of all the credit commercials out there but yet you’ve got different scores. Twenty-eight is the last number that I got when I talked to our credit pros.
Here are some quick credit tips if you’re looking at your score on an app or credit card bill. First of all, I realized that’s only 1 of 28. I’m getting down to the basics on this. There are three credit bureaus that monitor your credit. There are Equifax, TransUnion and Experian. When you run your credit for a home mortgage, they’re going to take all three bureaus’ reports. If you want to see your report, there are a lot of places that are giving it to you for free but you can also get it at AnnualCreditReport.com, which is I’m not sure if it’s a government but it is a free place. There was a law that came out that said, “You have to be able to get it.” You can get 1 a 1/4. You can get them each one every year.
It’s AnnualCreditReport.com and you can take a look at your credit report. You’re going to get your three scores. Keep in mind when they’re running that home mortgage, they’re going to take all 3 reports and 3 scores. It’s not the score on your app. They’re going to take the one that’s specifically designed for a home mortgage, 1 of your 28 scores. Keep this in mind too. They take what they call your mid score. That’s a fancy term for middle because all those mortgage brokers are way too busy to say the entire word middle. It’s your mid score. It’s not an average. Let’s say you had a 750, 710 and a 709. You don’t get an average. You’re a 710 and that’s your mid score.
Remember, those apps are great for helping you get started and know things but you have to talk to a mortgage pro to know your mortgage credit score. There’s a lot of great new information that’s at your fingertips but a lot of it is incomplete. I’m glad that I finally saw that one commercial that’s telling you that you have multiple different scores. I’m glad they’re getting that to you in 2021. I told you about it in 2019. Who’s keeping an eye out on who’s looking out for you? I don’t want to be a pessimist, skeptic and a negative nellie but don’t believe everything that comes on the apps. I know a lot of credit cards and banks are doing stuff to help you.
That’s great but a lot of them are doing it because the government forced them to. If you look at your credit card statement, maybe you’re a younger person. If you don’t remember, back in the day, they didn’t have that whole part on your credit card that tells you how many years it’s going to take you to pay it off if you only pay the minimum. That’s new because the government went, “You’re screwing over this entire generation of people and they’re already getting screwed by student loans. You need to explain how this whole credit card thing works.”
All those apps out there, they’re not doing it out of the goodness of their heart. It’s not giving away Karma or Sesames to you for free. They are selling services. They’re going to give you a taste of what’s going on with your monitoring. They’re going to tell you, you can improve your score but almost all the time, any of those improvements that they offer to you often include some deal that they’ve got a partnership with or you’re going to be paying them directly somehow some way.
App Corner
We’re getting started here on the fun facts but we’re going to take a break away from the fun facts and scoot over to a little place I like to call App Corner since we were talking about apps. It’s a quiet corner where we hang out in bean bags with twinkly lights and we smoke something. We get in these real heavy debates about the wonders of technology and how apps have changed our lives. You found this show somewhere online. Maybe you used an app to download it or an app to read it. Some of you out there buy all kinds of stuff with an app. You love your apps.
Maybe you even buy big stuff like stocks or cars. You can buy that stuff with an app but here’s the tip. You can’t get a decent home loan with an app by punching in a few stats. Hang out here in the App Corner. Let me tell you, it takes people. Here’s the only way an app works to get you a home loan. Maybe if you know exactly what you’re doing, you understand the entire mortgage system and you have perfect credit, no debt, tons of cash and you don’t need any advice, creative planning or solutions. Does that sound like you? Probably not because you probably wouldn’t have clicked on my show. That’s big maybe even for someone like that. They’re probably going to go to a professional, get some advice and find something tricky for them to do. They’ve got all the options because all their ducks are in a row.
Here at App Corner, we like to say, get out of here. You need guidance, not push-button service. You need advice, not product germination based on a few questions spit out by some AI to affirm that you are indeed approved. I’m sure a lot of you could be approved but is that app giving you the best approval? Buying a house is a big deal. It’s not a simple purchase that you can do with an app despite what the advertisers are going to tell you. The world’s changed. Apps do a lot of stuff but let me tell you this. Lending has changed too and that’s good for you. It’s gotten better, more stable, safer and you have more tools at your disposal.
I can’t tell you how many consultations that I do at a coffee shop or over a Zoom when the plans drastically change and usually for the better. That’s because we’re exploring all the options more than an app. Think of it this way, if an app can do it, why don’t you go find a person? They can open up an app, tell you everything the app says and everything else that they know by doing this full-time every single day. The same thing goes for your uncle who does loans on the side and even credit unions. I love them but sometimes they’re not much better than an app when they’re trying to get you creative, interesting products that are going to help you buy your home.
How Do I Get My Offer Accepted?
There are many apps, conservative credit unions and random big banks. All they’re going to do is take your information and jump to the quickest, easiest approval without exploring the best loan approval for you and all your long-term plans. That’s what an app does. Time to get out of the App Corner, putting the Visine and drops in your eyeballs. Let’s do another fun fact.
The quick answer to how do I get my offer accepted in this competitive market? Here’s one quick, good answer. A reader is about to close on his first home because he reached out to me and ended up with an awesome unicorn team in the area that he was going to buy. A unicorn realtor and a unicorn lender. Those magical, mystical people are very experienced but also will work with first-time home buyers.
The unicorn realtor texted me. He said, “We got this anonymous reader under contract.” Eight other offers. We had our lender do a desk appraisal and the other agent was like, “What’s that?” You’re out there going, “Desk appraisal. What is that?” Who cares? That’s not the point of the story. The point is that I know what that is and the unicorn team. That realtor and the lender that was helping this buyer knew what it was. What was crazy was the person who was selling the home, that other agent had no clue what it was.
The unicorn representing the buyer educated her and explained how much better this was and how much more viable his buyer was. The agent accepted the reader’s offer and it was only the third-best offer out of the eight other offers. Third best offer in price but she knew it was solid and it would close because maybe she was a little embarrassed. She learned something from that solid buyer representative.
[bctt tweet=”You can’t get a decent home loan with an app by punching in a few stats.” username=””]
What Is A Bridge Loan?
Our next fun fact is an oldie but a goodie. This comes to us from a Bay Area reader and I’m having a Zoom him to go over all this. We’re going to do a consultation to explain this. A lot of this information that I’m going to give you has to do with you guys out there who are looking to figure out how to buy a home. They got a home to sell. She didn’t ask me what’s a bridge loan. She said she wanted to do a bridge loan. Let me explain to you what a bridge loan is and how it works. I’m going to do the same thing on the consultation. Unfortunately, they might not like the answers.
I always say this to everybody who asks me for a consultation. I would rather disappoint the buyers or sometimes the sellers upfront. We can work it out and figure out the best way to get the best thing for you later on. Once we know what we can and we can’t do now, we can focus all our attention on what we can do tomorrow, the best and most efficient way to do it. That’s ironic. The sentence where I was trying to say how to do it in the most efficient and effective way possible, I flubbed all over it and couldn’t even say the sentence.
This info crosses over with bridge loans. It starts with home selling but we’re going to finish with lots of home buying tips. Specifically, a bridge loan is when someone already owns a home and they want to upgrade that home. How you do that is you sell one home and buy another. The biggest part of doing a deal like that is timing. You want to sell your home and make money to buy another home but that damn bank has the goal not to give you your money for your sale until your sale is official. That entitled buyer that you’re selling your home to wants to get the keys and live in that home at the closing when they give you their money. You’re like, “I need that money to buy another house. Can you give it to me early?” They’re like, “No, I give to you when it’s close.”
The new people you’re trying to buy a house from won’t give you the keys to the new house until you give them money. You’re stuck and you got to try to pull off the miracle of all miracles to get everyone to close on the same date. You got to get your buyer and the home you’re trying to buy that seller, 3 realtors, 3 lenders, 2 or 3 more lawyers or 2 or 3 more escrow companies all to work together to make this all happen in one day so you’re not homeless for one night. That’s where a bridge loan comes in.
This is a technique that time forgot. Maybe George Bailey at the savings and loan from It’s a Wonderful Life used to do these but they aren’t happening now. This is black and white stuff. You could tell a bank back in the old days, “Lend me the cash to buy a home and I’ll pay you back when I sell my home. I will take out a new loan with you.” It sounds cool but it doesn’t work like that anymore.
The banks don’t do bridge loans anymore. They do a bridge loan but what they do is they want you to take out one big loan that encumbers both loans on both houses. It’s this gigantic loan. The rates and the terms on that loan are never as good as if you’re getting one loan on the new house. What you’re trying to do is figure out a way to how can I sell my home, get the cash and then use that cash to get a new home without me being homeless.
One way to do it is to start looking before and during your selling process. Then what you do is, I know folks don’t like it here, but you take your stuff and stick it in storage. You sell your home whenever is best for you and your buyer. You live somewhere temporarily until you can close and then you’ve got the cash in hand that you can take and buy a new home.
I had some rad clients of mine. They’re good friends here in Southern California and creative artsy types. I can’t imagine why I was hanging out with them. That’s Jesse and Cathy. They sold their condo, got the cash and while they waited for their home to close on the one that we were buying, they took their closing money in their cash and got out of the condo. They rented it back for a month but at the end of that month, we still hadn’t closed on the home we were buying. They took a sweet roadie, went up the coast of California and camped for a couple of weeks. They came home and got the keys to their new home.
They are probably doing a couple of other deals that matter to them. Maybe it’s not another deal they’re doing. Maybe they have to wait to finish the school year. Maybe you have to wait because they have some big life event that they want to do in that house or be in this area for that. Every deal is about two things, time and money.
If you’re more flexible and you can couch surfer, road tripper, crash of the family while your stuff is in storage, by giving the buyer and the seller the time that works for them, you can net the most money. That’s the way that it works. If you’re the buyer, your apartment leases up. You can take a road trip, crash with the family, put your stuff in storage but give them the time that they want then maybe you can win a competitive deal.
Another very popular way that sellers are selling is because of all this craziness, we’re trying to figure out how to not have someone be homeless. Sellers realize it’s super competitive for them to buy so something that got big in 2021 and I’ve been doing it for years is they ask for a rent back. It’s also called a leaseback.
As the buyer, what you do is you say, “I’m going to close on this deal. I’m going to get my cash from my lender. I’ll give it to you and then we’re officially going to close. I’m officially going to become the owner of this house but I’m going to become your landlord.” The person you bought the house from, your now their landlord and they’re renting back from you. Sometimes for a week, a month and even three months. We do that to give them the time to secure a new home and the money from your loan that you paid for to buy that house. I know you’re thinking, “Why would I want to do that?” I told you, “You gave them time and money.”
You’re getting the sweet end of the deal because you’re flexible. You have the option to become one of the better offers that’s on the table. If you’re secure in your living arrangements because you’ve been planning this for a long time inside your little unicorn bubble like my girl Madison likes to say, “That’s with your bitch and unicorn realtor and lender. You’ve been prepping for this for a long time,” you’re ready for a small lease extension or maybe get out at the end of your lease because you got someplace else to go, you can offer time and offer them to get the money whenever they want.
By offering those two big pieces, you could stand out from the other twenty offers. Maybe even the ones that were higher than yours. All they needed was an exact moving day that could work out for them. What are the odds that are going to be the exact day that lines up with the last day of your lease? In this market, when it’s so competitive, you can offer a rent back maybe with your offer. I do it every single time. I check with every seller, “When do they need to be out of the house? We can close this as quick as 21 days but how soon do you need to be out because we’ve got flexibility on our end?”
[bctt tweet=”It’s better to disappoint the buyer, upfront and then figure out the best thing for you later on.” username=””]
I expressed that to the person selling the house right away so my buyers look more appealing. My buyers look like a buyer that’s going to be able to close on the house and give them what they need. I did have one of my Disney buyers. When I first sold them a house, his name was Dan but he’s all married and stuff. Dan and Lynn were looking to buy a house and they wanted to buy a home from some people moving out of state. Those people who were making a big move and needed an extra time for their move. On top of that, they had lived there for a long time. One of the parts of our contract was that they agreed that they would be doing the full termite. We found out that that termite was going to need to be tented. That’s big termite work that needs to be done.
They’re packing up and trying to move across the country. The last thing they wanted to do was figure out how to tent the house for a termite because you have to cover all your food in plastic, wrap everything up and then bail for three days. What we did was we structured a deal with a couple of weeks of rent back, which we did for free. What that does is it increases the value of our offer without increasing the price of Dan and Lynn’s loan. We didn’t have to throw on a couple of thousand dollars. We gave them a couple of thousand dollars worth of extra time on the property, what would have been paid to them in a rent back, as part of the deal.
What we did was we tacked an extra three days on the end of that once they bailed, we could put it up the termite tent and then Dan and Lynn could move in. Not only when is the deal in this crazy competitive market in 2021 but the sellers were happy that when the tent came off, we went back to the house. We found a massive mounted television in the garage, another massive TV mounted in the backyard with surround sound and ahead of a full cover. It could stay safe in the elements for fourteen times a year that it rains here in Southern California. There was a full fridge in the garage. There was a subwoofer in the backyard, two huge Edison light strings that were perfectly strong along with the whole backyard and even some spare change was left in some of the drawers. None of that was contracted during the deal but they did it as a thank you because we were so accommodating. They had given the seller options.
New Homes
Next one, a lot of people ask me about new homes. I could do a whole show on it. There are so many different pros and cons to a new home versus what we call a resale home. It’s not a used home. At the start of this correspondence with my readers, he said, “I was excited about buying a new home. The process of it is much easier than going through a resale and having to worry about all those bitters I keep hearing about.” A couple weeks laters, I got a text that said, “We found out that there’s something we were not clear. It’s going to make us walk away from this new home purchase. The prices that are advertised are not what we’re going to pay.” That was because of the date of the closing.
That closing is far away because they got to build the house and the price increases quarterly. We weren’t aware of this. That’s one thing you need to be aware of. I’ve sold new builds even to a reader who is here in Southern California, as well as many other clients of mine. Don’t get sucked in and look at the billboard prices or the prices that they hang on the flags that you see in the town. For many reasons, that’s not going to be the price. You can’t compare that to the resale prices you see on Zillow.
Another thing about those billboard prices is those are no upgrades. If you go to the construction site and you walk through a model home, that home has a $100,000 to $200,000 depending on how expensive a home you’re looking at. In upgrades, by comparison to the base price, that’s the billboard price. Sometimes you get no yard amenities at all. By amenities, I mean grass. A lot of times, the billboard price is four walls, basic appliances, basic paint, flooring and dirt yards.
One of the other things that you have to be aware of is you have to be sure that if the home takes a while to be built, you have to understand that the price is locked. How long is it locked? Is it 3, 6, 9 months while they build it? You have to keep in mind and know this. If they haven’t locked it in and the market’s going up, the builder is giving you crazy built-in equity.
If you’re buying a home now and the market’s going up, it’s going to be worth more in 6 or 9 months. You might think that’s going to be a better deal for you because you’re not going to have to get a bidding war but I’ve heard stories from all over the country. If they’re doing something like that and they’re giving free months of equity away then a lot of these builders, what they’re doing because I’ve seen it in 2003, 2004. 2005, 2013, 2014 and in 2021, they’re going to do a lottery and you’re going to show up at 9:00 AM on Monday morning and get a wristband like you’re trying to get concert tickets.
That’s the way we used to do it before the internet. Some of you might not know what I’m talking about but it’s a lottery. Builders aren’t stupid. If homes are going up, they’re going to sell for top dollar always. They’re either going to have incremental increases included or do a lottery and maybe give it to folks based on the publicized prices, those billboard prices with no upgrades and then they’ll release the next phase of homes but they’re going to jack the price way up.
Realtors Are Commissioned
Another fun fact, this is to help you out. You know me trying to be the captain of kindness and positivity. I’m going to give you a little bad news but know that it comes from a good place. If you’re exploring different areas of the country because you don’t know exactly where you want to live, you want to reach out to a realtor and talk to them about the option of exploring in that realtor’s area. You have to expect that you might not get the greatest service in the world. That’s because realtors are 100% commission and don’t make a dime until a few days after they give you the keys.
If you can’t decide between Nashville, Orlando or Omaha and you want to reach out to three different realtors and expect to get 100% service from them when there’s only a 33% chance that you’re going to end up working with them, it’s probably not going to work out in your favor. That sucks but that’s what this show is about, giving you the information. You can take it, process it and do whatever you want with it.
You shouldn’t be expecting a realtor to send you all kinds of listings from another state for months then drive you around to find a home that suits you if you haven’t even decided that that’s where you want to live. If you need some tips on how to explore other homes, we did one episode with my friends who moved up from California up to the Pacific Northwest and maybe I’ll cover it more on another episode. Keep in mind, a lot of that research, you might have to start on your own.
Be Like Mike
We’re going to get into a fun story with fun fact lessons built into it. This is the quote I got from someone that I’ve been talking to from the show for years now. “Thanks again for the inspiration to get the process started earlier. We ended up buying a home about a year sooner than we originally thought possible.” That’s from my friend, Mike. He first reached out to me at the end of 2019. He thought they’d be on 2 or 3-year plan but they ended up buying sooner than they thought at the beginning of 2021. It’s bought with a nice low 5% down payment and bought an entire year ahead of schedule.
What did that mean for Mike? 2021, depending on where you’re at, 8%, 9% to 12% appreciation, that is profit, straight up, that you do nothing except pay your mortgage and your house goes up in value. Will it go down someday? Yeah but for now, it’s up, which means when it does go down, Mike will have a cushion. He would have missed out on it because he didn’t know that he could do it but he read the blog and figured it out. For those of you out there who are looking for tips and tricks, you read how to buy a home because you want to know how to buy a home. You want the details on how to do this. You do the work on your own and when you’re ready, you’re going to go out there and make it happen.
You follow while I do all my Ted Lasso motivational and inspirational stuff. I got to tell you, I love you but you might be missing the point because the best hack and insider trick that I can give you is the real answer to how to buy a home. Here it is but for you robot people who don’t like me pumping you up, you might have to deal with it a little bit because it’s wrapped up in the motivational, “You can do this.”
[bctt tweet=”Every deal is about time and money.” username=””]
Timing in buying your home is the most important. How and know-how when you’re buying. Timing is everything for first-time home buyers. The best for you at the end of 2021 is to get on it. You can do this and you should be doing this. The economist sees and appreciates the market for a while. The sooner, the better if you can. If you can’t, you start planning to work it out.
It sounds motivational. “You got this. Go do this.” You don’t know what you don’t know when you don’t know that you can maybe pull this off. It’s also fiscally the thing to do. I’m telling you to be like Mike, who didn’t know what he didn’t know. Once he read the blog and learn his options, his plan went from 2 or 3 years to 1.5 years. He realized what he could do. Use the info here to get yourself that unicorn team and realtor like what Mike did in his area and made it happen for himself.
I have no idea what fact is going to be with your personal light bulb. Maybe you don’t need 20% down. Maybe it’s that 3.5% used by many buyers. The average in 2020 was 8% or 9% that most people put down. Only 3% or 4% put cash down of all the first-time buyers. A lot of folks put down 0% first-time buyers. There are few programs out there but it’s available if you’re military or a vet. Maybe your light bulb was realizing that sometimes your rent payment may be very similar to and sometimes even lower than your mortgage payment if you bought a place. Maybe it’s you realizing that you can look at your down payment in the same way that you look at first and last as a security deposit on an apartment then you’re going to be paying roughly the same monthly payment for a mortgage as you do as your rent.
There are thousands of other light bulbs in almost 60 episodes I’ve got in the hours of me rambling but the simplest tip, the tool, technique, hack, shortcut or insider information that I can give you is this one. Spend more time researching who you hire than how to do this. I have an analogy that I’ve used before and I say it with humility regarding the importance of a realtor because I don’t want to overinflate the importance of a realtor.
The analogy is this, would you hire a doctor or a lawyer by studying everything there is to know about how to do the surgery or litigate a lawsuit in court so that you could practically do it on your own? Go out and hire someone because they have the license and then you lead the way, the whole time using your Google knowledge that you acquired or would you spend most of your time researching finding the best professional doctor or lawyer and work with them but let them lead the way? I’m not saying that realtors are as important as anyone who heals people or keep you out of jail but I can tell you I’ve had a buyer with a bad realtor and the way they explained the process is like someone who had an ugly court battle or a painful colonoscopy.
If you want to get this done, be like Mike. Sometimes I dream that he is me. Got to see that’s how I dream to be like Mike. If I could be like Mike, I want to be like Mike. That’s a commercial about Michael Jordan. He was a basketball player before Kevin Durant, LeBron James and Kyrie Irving. That commercial aired in 1991 and that’s the year that I should have bought a home instead of renting an apartment in North Hollywood. Subsequently years I spent renting and lost $104,000 in rent that could have gone towards buying a home. That is why I started this show and I give you the secrets so you can be like Mike and not like me in 1991.
Finding Your Own Unicorn
Be like Mike, not Michael Jordan but reader Mike. He read, used the tips, found his own magical unicorn, realtor and mortgage pro to help him realize his dreams a year earlier than he thought was possible. He made it happen using the free tips from this old dummy here who didn’t take my own advice back in the 1990s, mostly because I didn’t know what a mortgage was back then. Take the information and you can use it to find your own unicorn. I’m not selling you anything but hopes and dreams. I want everyone to get their own roadmap. Do your thing.
This is for you. Take it and use it as you like. Enough business is going to come with the goodwill of my happy clients and readers of this show. By educating the masses on building trust, that’s priceless. It’s simple. You do your research and find the genuine advocate to serve you so you can avoid the dangers and come out on top, probably a little bit sooner than you think. When you are stoked beyond belief that you pulled this off then you can share the show. Either way, it’s going to be me or the unicorn nation that is going to have enough people that come in and end up hiring us then I can keep this mission going. That entire mission is to have enough coming in so that unicorn nation and I can keep helping as many individuals as the nation and I can.
Eventually, I’ve got loftier goals of changing the entire real estate industry from the inside with a revolution of readers. You find the unicorns out there. It’s only about 25% of them, as far as the agents out there. We can all rise up together and crush all the greedy realtors that try to take advantage of you or worse, ignore you altogether. Until that revolution happens, make sure that you’re very aware of who you’re hiring to help follow it. Take this information for free and run with it. Find your own path, go out there and use it to get your own unicorn. I got a lot of readers, even some of them appear on my wall that did that themselves. That’s awesome. You can reach out to me for a unicorn and we’ll grow the revolution with the proven pros. We know I have done it with other people.
We have almost 50 readers in 2021 that have closed. A lot of them started in 2020 but have closed all over the country. Every time somebody closes, the wall gets more pictures on it. With every new homeowner, I’m happy no matter how you get there. I’ve got one more fun fact and big tip coming. It’s tied directly to this and I’ll get to that. If you’re sitting there, you’re walking or on a treadmill and you’re thinking you want to be like Mike, what are you waiting for? Reach out to me and get your plane started before you think you should. What do you know? I love you but you’re reading to me in your eyes for advice so you’re looking for some guidance.
All you got to do is go to HowToBuyAHome.com. Fill out the contact form and ask me your question. Even if it’s, “What do I do?” Seriously, I get that question a lot and it’s awesome. If you want more stuff out there, there’s a David Sidoni on YouTube or Instagram. I’m in there as well. If you’re still hanging around Facebook, How to Buy a Home is the Facebook group. There are lots of tips there but reach out any way you can. Slide into my DMs. Go to HowToBuyAHome.com or David Sidoni. It’s there waiting. The sooner you start to plan, the more options that you have.
Like Mike, planning for this should begin immediately. The more prepared you are, the more options. Eventually, every purchase that you make has a compromise but you’re going to have to compromise less and have multiple different options the more prepared than you are. It could be in many different ways. The education, financial planning, creative financial options, neighborhood studies and debt reduction, start it all now.
The Magic Word: Timing
What’s this last little fun fact? It’s my magic word, timing. Better options with more planning. I told you about Dan and Lynn. Timing got them the deal. They could do the rent back and give a couple of days for the tenting, snagged and great home. You can do this by yourself. You don’t even have to try. You could save and reduce it on your own but you might do it wrong. It’s going to take you longer to reach your goal. You’re like, “Did you say wrong? How can I save and reduce debt wrong?” For buying a house sometimes you can. There are different financial formulas and things you should be doing, equations and different ways to do it that might blow your chance to buy. I’m still writing my opposition paper on David Ramsey and that show is going to come out soon.
I just called him David. I got formal because I’m scared. It’s an opposition paper. I ain’t scared. Believe me. There are so many old-school philosophies out there. If you studied on your own and you’re not talking to someone that has your best interests at heart, you might be saving and reducing your own debt but you could maybe be costing yourself tens of thousands of dollars in missing out on a situation that you could be taking advantage of sooner than you think you can.
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What if you start the plan with a unicorn in the market changes? You have months of proper guided planning that you can adjust with the professional who knows your situation. If everything goes bonkers and goes, “It wires tomorrow.” Do you want to call somebody who’s freaking out in their office thinking about jumping out the window or do you want to talk to her unicorn that is ready and prepared for this in working with people who might say, “Everything is going nuts. Let’s chill out and wait a few months and see how this goes?” There weren’t trying to sell you and get you to buy a house the first second that they started talking to you. It’s not the way we roll.
Starting a plan for you means that you have options in the future. Timing matters but options not but also options matter when you’re buying. You can adjust your timing if you start now. It doesn’t matter if you were a conservative person or reckless. The more options that you have, the more satisfied that you’re going to be with the final outcome. You can go crazy or get as safe as you want if you have lots of planning that set you up and gives you lots of options.
If a reader started reading in 2019 and spent all the 2019 and 2020 working with professional guidance and then the crazy summer of 2020 happened, there were multiple offers on the homes, that was all this crazy stuff going on. There are rent back requests and full loan vetting. They’re asking you for your blood type and your first-born child. They want to know everything about you and see your bank accounts.
Sellers are going to have different demands for increased deposits. The sellers might go nuts and ask for the moon. Who do you think is going to have a better shot? The person that has been working for all of 2019 and 2020 prepping with the professional team or the buyer that realized their lease was up and the rent’s getting jacked up so they went to rocket mortgage and they got approval on their phone? They’re like trying to buy the house like they’re trying to get into a concert and say, “Scan this. Does this mean I can buy a house?”
If you think it’s too early to reach out, there’s an eighteen-year-old reader that reached out and wants to start her plan. I’m there for her. I don’t know how long it’s going to take for her to buy a house but if it takes her ten years, I pray to God, my son’s running this show and I’m retired on a boat. I figured, “Let’s work it out.” She reached out. We’re working on her plan. We’re not working on the plan. It’s her plan. This is not one size fits all.
If you’re here and you want to know the way to do it, there is no the way. There’s your way. You need professional guidance to help you do that. You need to get the basic education first to understand how this works. That’s great. I’m glad you’re here for that but then you got to jump in and grab yourself a unicorn team or you asked me for a unicorn in your area and I’ll help you find one. The next step, no matter if you find it yourself or we help you find it then you make a pro unicorn team for you. Your realtor first and then help your realtor find a unicorn lender, not an app. They’re going to customize your plan. Your best plan is the one that you work for as long or as short as you like so that you can have the options when it makes the most sense for you, not when an app or a guy in an open house says, “You can buy a house. Let’s go next weekend.”
To everybody out there, I am so glad that you are reading. I cannot thank you enough. This is a random thing I started and it’s become this huge revolution. It’s a movement. That’s what we are. We’re a movement. I got to let you know everyone out there reading, unless you have a plan in motion, I’m glad you read but you’re no closer to buying a home than when you started this episode. Think about it. I don’t end each episode with you can read this. It’s you can do this.
Important Links:
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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!
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