Ep 110 – Home Inspections For First-Time Home Buyers 

 July 12, 2022

HBH 110 | Home Inspection

2022 has brought home inspections to the forefront. So in this episode, David Sidoni breaks down how it works, what to expect, and how to protect yourself with this crucial piece of the home-buying puzzle. And to continue your first-time home buyer education, he then breaks down the other I’s of home buyer terms and definitions.

Home Inspections For First-Time Home Buyers

How The General Home Inspection Process Works, And What To Be Aware Of

No matter what’s going on in the market, a home inspection is super important. If you’ve been paying attention to what’s happening with the buying cycle in 2022, you’re hearing a lot about home inspections. People are waiving them. People are saying, “It’s not that important.” Sellers are saying, “You have to buy the home as-is so why do you even do an inspection?” We’re going to get into all the details about the importance of a home inspection, what you need to know, what you don’t need to freak out about and the things that are the most important when you take a look at your home from top to bottom. Let’s do it.

I’m doing this episode near the end of June 2022. To all you people reading in the future, remember how freaked out everybody was in the summer of 2022? The entire week of news has led with the economy and that is usually not a good thing. It is not that bad economic news is always bad for you. Check out episode 108 if you want details on what’s going on with all the bad stuff in the economy and how it might be good for you.

Inspection

In this episode, we’re going to have a nice little educational lesson. We’re going to dive right into the terms and definitions for the letter I. We’re going to start with the most important term for first-time home buyers, which is Inspection. The market has been ridiculously competitive and because of that, there has been a lot of talk about inspections. It seems to be the buzzword. I’m going to go deep on this one because a home inspection is so primly important to you when you’re buying your home, especially your first home.

No matter what’s going on in the market, it’s still something that you should be very conscious of and know exactly what you’re doing or not doing. For those of you reading this in the future, in 2022, things are very different for first-time home buyers. I hope it doesn’t stay like that and hasn’t remained like that. In the summer of 2022, here’s the difference. Our money doesn’t jiggle-jiggle. With Steph Curry, the history point line should be at 30 feet for him because it’s not fair for everybody else in the NBA.

If you’re wondering what it was like in the summer of 2022, it’s hot. Also, housing has been hot for several straight years so people, especially first-time home buyers, are trying to do anything they can to get an edge to break into the market. They’re doing whatever it takes to get their offer accepted. That’s because every home out there seems to have multiple offers on it by the end of the first weekend. If not, sometimes the first day. It is freakishly competitive out there. It’s like the red wedding and everyone’s fighting for just one turkey leg.

Let’s go with the basics of inspection first. When you buy a home, you have a period to inspect the home, physically as well as inspect all the paperwork and all the documentation on the home before you sign off and agree to complete the purchase. To be clear, in most areas, you have to first get your offer accepted and then go into this inspection period.

Depending on where you live, it’s called different things. There’s the contingency period, condition period, option period and due diligence period for a lot of you folks on the East Coast. This is a clause sometimes offered in a purchase agreement that grants the buyers a predetermined amount of time during the contract to perform any necessary inspections. You’re going to get to inspect the home before you commit to it. What I explained right there was the inspection contingency period but it all goes together so I threw it all at one shot.

In most places, because it is different everywhere in the country, you’re going to put in a deposit but you have a certain amount of days to inspect and decide that you want to move forward before that deposit becomes non-refundable. This is sometimes known as the buyer beware period. Think of it as if you’re buying a car and you agree on a price on a car before you go and check it out with your mechanic. The period that you get to inspect and take it to your mechanic and have them look under the hood is your condition contingency option or due diligence period. Your offer gets accepted, you put in your earnest money deposit and then you schedule your inspection.

The Google definition of inspection is this, “It is when a buyer pays a licensed professional inspector to visit the home and prepare a report on its condition and needed repairs. It can sometimes be a visual and mechanical inspection and examination of a home to identify defects and assess the home’s condition.” One of the big things that you should be very aware of inspection is most home inspections are what we call a “general inspection.”

They’re going to look at the roof, plumbing and electrical. They’re going to check all that stuff out but oftentimes, the general inspector will pass the buck. It means if something looks like it’s too big or going to be an issue, then they’re going to say it should be inspected by somebody else. That’s called liability. It’s a big word when it comes to your inspection.

They’re going to say something like, “Such and such was noted and noticed. We recommend further inspection by a specialized roof plumber or electrical professional.” What you need to be aware of is that once your offer gets accepted, your clock is running for you to decide if you’re going to go all-in and purchase the home or pull out of the deal based on what you find in the inspection. That’s why it’s very important that you understand the first inspection is general and you may want to do inspections after that.

HBH 110 | Home Inspection
Home Inspection: When you buy a home, you have a period of time to inspect the home physically, as well as inspect all the paperwork and documentation on the home before you sign off and agree to complete the purchase.

The mistake that I see is a lot of buyers book this home inspection thinking it covers everything to the complete detail. They book it near the end of that period, whether it is, 8 days, 10 days, 15 days or 21 days. That’s the end of your contingency option due diligence period so it’s best that you do your inspection early. My recommendation is to get that first general inspection done as quickly as can so that you have time if the general inspection says, “There are some pretty heavy stuff here. You should get a specialized vendor out here.” If you do it early enough, you’ll still have time so you could get out a specialized roofer, plumber, sewer person, electrical professional or pool specialist.

I get a lot of buyers that get excited about buying a home and then when I ask them to take a little time off work, they freak out and say to me, “How can I take time off work? I have to pay for a home.” Maybe you should have thought about that a month ago then because, during that two weeks, you can’t be unavailable to your realtor and lender when you’re trying to buy a home. You’ve got to have some flexibility in your schedule because it’s going to save you tens of thousands of dollars. If you’re thinking, “This will be cool. I’m going to buy a home after work at 7:00 PM and keep working seven days a week,” you could be in for a big shocker.

What To Expect From General Home Inspection

Once you get the inspection, let me give you a few real-world ideas, thoughts and some general no BS on what to inspect. The number one thing about your general home inspection is it is going to scare the crap out of you. When you see all the flaws they pointed out on your inspection, you’re going to think that your home was built by a group of junior high kids on a work-release program. This is normal to be that scared and let me explain why. When you buy a home, all the people serving you are simultaneously doing a couple of things. They’re attempting to help you with the biggest financial transaction of your life while at the same time, also making sure that you don’t sue them for the work that they do.

More than half of the paperwork that you signed in the mountain of documents that are required to purchase a home, is you, the buyer, acknowledging something else to cover someone else’s behind. That’s the truth. If you go into it that way and realize that, you won’t be so freaked out when you read all this paperwork that tells you such terrible, freaky things. Where I live, we have local disclosures that need to be signed by the buyer. Each year, something new gets added to the local disclosures. It was 21 when I started. We’re already up to 47.

Here’s how it works. We, in California, the most litigious state in the country, every time somebody sues somebody in real estate for something, it gets added to disclosures. An example is when next door became big and popular. Suddenly, I notice that the newest disclosure added was a wildlife notification. Why would that get added? It’s because of next door. If you live in Southern California, every other post next door is about a coyote.

It’s like these people have never gone camping or watched National Geographic. It’s ridiculous. The realtors and everyone involved had to figure out that we need to tell people about this because people were turning around trying to sue people by saying, “I bought a house on planet earth. There was a non-human creature that came into my yard. I didn’t think non-humans existed in this suburb that I live in.” That was a lawsuit like the coffee is hot at McDonald’s.

Back to the inspection report, it’s going to scare you. In the case of a resale home, you’re buying a used product. Used products have wear and tear. Nothing built remains functional and operational forever. Accept that when you’re buying a home, even though you’re paying hundreds of thousands of dollars. It seems like everybody thinks that they’re entitled to this perfect home because they’re paying all that money. You’re entitled to the perfect amount of home that you decide to pay for. Remember that when you’re nickel-and-diming and going crazy in your negotiations when you’re trying to buy a home.

Know What It Really Means And When Credit Is Due

Let’s go back to practical positivity. Do not expect the owners to maintain a home in the same way that you do. Everybody has a different expectation. Everybody’s version of clean is different, not to mention livable. There are things that you might see as unacceptable. Remember this phrase. “When it comes to your inspection, what’s very important is working conditions.”

It’s like the heater is old but it functions during the inspection. The inspector checks it out because the temperature goes everywhere it’s supposed to go. Another phrase that people use all the time is, “At the end of its life.” As long as it’s still working now, you’re buying the home now. You’re not buying the home to be in working condition years or months from now. In most places in the country, you will get a home warranty for one year to cover your butt in case things are at the end of their life. If something’s in working condition, that’s what the seller is selling you.

Here are some normal types of examples of what you can expect during an inspection and things that will help you when this all hits you because it will be overwhelming, scary and freaky. The inspector probably won’t say it but I’ll go with this one first. If the home has butt ugly wallpaper, that’s taste, not an imperfection. It’s not something the inspector’s going to call out and probably not something you can ask for a credit or a repair. If the home’s kitchen stove doesn’t turn on during an inspection and that stove is part of the original contract, that’s an issue to discuss with the seller and that’s where you can negotiate a repair or a credit.

Think back to my car analogy. You look at a car. You see it online. It says it has air conditioning. You go in, try the car out and it doesn’t have AC. It is like if you buy a home with a stove in it, you think the stove works unless they disclosed it somewhere. If they did not, that would be a perfect example of something that you find in the inspection that you can then negotiate with the seller.

[bctt tweet=”Once your offer gets accepted, your clock is running for you to decide if you will go all-in and purchase the home or pull out of the deal based on what you find in the inspection.” via=”no”]

On the flip side of that, if a home has a hole in the wall from a doorknob slamming into the drywall and it’s not affecting plumbing or electrical and it’s purely cosmetic, that hole was there during the initial viewing of the home before you meet the offer. If it was there and it could be easily viewed and seen by you during your offer, then we’re assuming that the seller has already taken that into consideration and that you took it into consideration before you put the offer on the home.

You’re buying the home at this price even though you know there’s a hole in the wall. That’s where it can get tricky though. What did you see? What did you not see? What was obvious? What was not obvious? That’s why I do the show to give you mounds of ambiguous information so that when you go in to buy a home and you don’t know what’s going on, you go, “That’s what Sidoni said.”

If you want to get into a gray area, let’s say that somewhere on the back patio, there’s a huge crack in the cement. It’s something that you could trip on but the owners have had it for years and have never bugged them at all. That falls into a tricky in the negotiation. You’re going to need to convince the owners who don’t mind it and have never thought it was a problem that this is a health and safety issue for you moving forward and that it should be repaired before you purchase the house. I could go on and on with examples like this. You see why having a solid representative to help you negotiate this part of the transaction is crucial.

I am stoked that your cousin got their real estate license but if they don’t have an experienced veteran with them at the inspection helping them through this part of the deal, even if your cousin’s kicking you back $5,000 or $10,000, I bet you’re going to lose 5 times more than that in a poorly negotiated inspection concession.

The way things are going with the historic low inventory in the psycho-competitive markets for first-time home buyers has a lot of chatter about waiving inspection. Why in the world would you waive an inspection? It’s because you put in seven offers, you’re dying and want to get one of your offers accepted. I can’t tell you exactly what to do in every individual’s situation. There is no blanket statement or rule of thumb. There’s nothing in real estate that is the same for every single transaction but I would say to consult with your unicorn.

If it’s a standard, freestanding, regular single-family home, I don’t know anything about your situation but in general, it’s not recommended that you buy the home without an inspection. I wouldn’t necessarily waive it. You could still get the inspection done and not ask for anything but you should give yourself at least a few days to check and make sure nothing is hiding in the basement.

Weigh Your Options

You want to make sure that you still have the ability to back out of a deal before you’ve even had a chance to look under the hood, going back to my car analogy. Even if the seller says the deal is as-is and will not repair anything for a regular single-family home, I would still ask that you at least do the inspection and have that be part of your period that you can back out of the deal.

Why am I saying this with the single-family home? There are a lot of examples where if you’re buying a newer home, model home, condo or townhome where a lot of this stuff is covered by an HOA, maybe you can get away with waving the inspection. I don’t know. I don’t recommend it but without me knowing the exact specifics about your situation, I’m also not saying to not ever do that.

A good way to think about your inspection that you get is a to-do list. You and your realtor, before you get it, come up with a number. We like to call it the unexpected number. Maybe you’re thinking, “Everything seems to look good to me. I love this house. We got a good price. I’ll tell you what. If we don’t find more than $5,000 worth of stuff that make it basic and livable, then I’m for sure going to go through and close on this house.” You’ve then got your number. You get your inspection and work with that.

If you find more than that, then you have to sit down but don’t weigh everything that came in from the inspection. You’re weighing everything. How many offers have you put in? How much do you feel like this one was on the market? Is this in the right area for you? Don’t get so hung up, narrow-minded or tunnel-visioned that you’re not buying a home because of the air conditioner that’s $3,000 to fix the one part that’s there.

Maybe it’s $3,000 to fix the one part there but every other home that you’ve looked at that was even close to this home was $20,000 more. Every other home you’ve looked at was in a crappy neighborhood and this one is in a great neighborhood. There’s a lot to think about. You can’t put the inspection fixes as a singular reason for why you’re not getting a good deal. You have to put it together in the entire package.

HBH 110 | Home Inspection
Home Inspection: More than half of the paperwork you signed in the mountain of documents required to purchase a home is you, the buyer, acknowledging something else to cover someone else’s behind.

If you thought I was done, here are some more things that would include the entire package. “How competitive was it to get this home? Do you think you have a shot at getting a home like this one for the same price? Have interest rates changed in the past week or two since you got this one under contract and got to lock it?” Going to another home may affect the value of your next purchase, not to mention the value of the purchase that you’re already in.

Negotiations After Consideration

Are the fines, repairs and things that the inspector found for you going to cost you more than starting over, paying more rent for another month and having to get into another deal, our price and interest rates are going up? How was that? All of these questions depend on which way the market is swinging and trending but in general, even in a regular market, my buyers and I use that inspection as a to-do list.

We gather the information from the general inspection and then specific vendors if we need to. I, as the representative, will negotiate 1, 2, 3 or 4 of the main pieces. The main tool of my negotiation tactics is, “Where are we in the market? Are we the only offer after three months?” All of those factors depend on how much we ask for. In a competitive market like this, we’re asking for nothing and hoping that we can continue to get this purchase because we realize the home is going to be worth $10,000 more.

If it helps, think of it this way. My buyers put their offering and negotiated the best price based on the assumption that the home wasn’t safe and in working order. We then do the inspection. The inspection reveals X, Y and Z. Therefore since these items weren’t obvious in the initial visual inspection when we came up with our price and presented the offer that we negotiated, we’re requesting that those items, X, Y and Z, be repaired before the closing or we’re going to be requesting a credit of X amount of dollars for the items, X, Y and Z. If you keep that principle in mind, the entire inspection process will be much less overwhelming. Remember, it’s still going to scare the crap out of you and make you think that someone built your home on Minecraft.

Let’s move on to the next I. We’re going to go into the Inspection certificate. An inspection certificate is a document that verifies the property as inspected and completed for whatever the individual rules and guidelines for individual cities and counties are. The inspection is usually performed by a designated agent of the county. It has to be accepted and put in before the transfer of the property can happen. This doesn’t happen everywhere. Sometimes, the inspection report is purely a buyer beware and something to be used to negotiate for any changes and up-keeps that the buyer didn’t see as obvious when they put the offer in on the house.

One thing I have to explain to my buyers all the time is that, depending on what state you live in, if you don’t have an inspection certificate that’s part of your home purchase process, the buyer is not obligated to bring anything up to code. This is a huge common myth. In California, most cities don’t need an inspection certificate. To transfer the ownership of the property in one of the biggest states in the country, all sales are as-is and is buyer beware.

The seller only has to do three things. They have to install a carbon monoxide detector and smoke detectors and make sure the water heater is earthquake strapped. That’s it. That’s all that the sellers are obligated to do. Don’t go in thinking that after the inspection, they’re going to have to bring everything up to code. The inspection is for your benefit to understand what things need to be done on the property. That’s it.

The next I is the Income property. Income property is real estate developed or purchased to produce income such as a rental unit. Next, we’re going to get into some fancy math terms, which is the Index. The index is a benchmark interest rate that reflects general market conditions. The index is going to change based on the market. It changes in the index along with your loan margin and determines the changes to your interest rate if you’re using an ARM, which is an Adjustable-Rate Mortgage.

The index is a published number or percentage such as an average interest rate or yield on US treasury bills. A margin is added to the index to determine the interest rate that will be charged on your ARM. Do you understand that? If you didn’t, don’t even think about getting an adjustable-rate mortgage. Don’t touch an ARM if you don’t know what the index at the margin and how they combine to make your interest rate means.

The next I is an IRA. That’s an Individual Retirement Account. This is a tax-deferred plan that can help you build your retirement. When it comes to buying a home, I mentioned IRAs because tax laws could change in the next twenty seconds if they feel like it. You can use your IRA for purchasing your home. $10,000 is the maximum that you can use towards a primary principal purchase. That’s what we call it.

Our next I is Inflation. If you check out the past episodes, I talked about inflation a lot but if you’re looking for a detailed analysis, it’s back to episode 67. Some of that stuff has changed, mostly the rate of inflation but the general concept is all there. To your knowledge, if you want the Google definition of inflation, one of the economic neuro definitions is that it’s the number of dollars in circulation. When it exceeds the number of goods and services available for purchasing, it causes the prices of those goods and services to increase. Inflation results in a decrease in the value of the dollar.

[bctt tweet=”You’re entitled to the perfect amount of home you decide to pay for.” via=”no”]

The next one is the Initial escrow deposit. Sometimes, this is called the Earnest Money Deposit or EMD. That’s the money that you’re going to put in to open up your contract. Another initial that we have is the initial interest rate. This is the first-rate that you get when you’re doing an Adjustable-Rate Mortgage or ARM. Sometimes, this is known as the start rate. What do you need to know about the initial interest rate of an adjustable mortgage? It adjusts.

The initial adjustment cap is our next I and that is associated with these ARMs. The cap determines how much the interest rate can increase the first time it adjusts after the first period. It’s very common for this cap to be either 2% or 5%, meaning that at the first-rate change, the rate can’t be more than 2 or 5 percentage points higher than the initial fixed rate. That’s why if you get something to 3% and all of a sudden rates go up to 15%, you can’t go higher than 5% or maybe 10%.

Our next I is the Inquiry. This is a word we hear a lot when we’re talking about credit scores. It’s a request for your credit report by a lender or another business. It happens when you’re filling out an application to request more credit. Hopefully, too many inquiries on a credit report can hurt your credit score. However, I will say two things about inquiries. Number one, you can do as many as you want if you’re doing automotive or mortgage within anywhere from 3 to 6 weeks depending on who you talk to. That means you can shop around our shop lenders and only get one inquiry hit.

The other thing about inquiries is I have never seen someone pull their credit a year before buying a home and that is the reason they couldn’t buy a home. I have seen people say, “I don’t want to pull my credit. I can’t do an inquiry.” They wait until they’re ready to buy a home and then they pull their credit before they buy a home and something in there causes them to not buy the home. The moral of the story is don’t wait to pull your credit and get the inquiry. Get it done early. It’s a few points. Especially if you do it twelve months early, you’ve got nothing but time to jack it back up.

The next I is Installment. This is the regular periodic payment that a borrower pays to a lender. They’re used in the next I, Installment debt. This is important to understand for your credit score. This is a loan that’s repaid in accordance with the schedule of payments for a specified term and it has an end date. It’s like an auto loan. These are much less of a hit on your credit score than your revolving credit lines because if you go out and go shopping on your Visa or MasterCard, it can stay there forever and doesn’t have an end date. You get a bigger hit on your credit score. In episode 56, I talked about the potential of using installment debt versus revolving debt to pump your credit score up.

The next I is Interest. That’s the cost that you pay to borrow money. It’s the payment that you make to the lender, whoever the lender is, for the money that’s loaned to you. That goes through our next I, the Interest rate. It is the amount of interest charged on a monthly loan payment. It’s usually expressed as a percentage. It’s the cost that you’re going to pay each year to borrow the money. It does not reflect any fees or any other charges that you have to pay for the loan. In a simple example, on $100,000, if you have an interest rate of 5%, you’ve agreed to pay $5,000 each year that you borrow that amount.

The next interest is an interest-only loan. This falls under the categories of the ARMs. This is a loan you best know what you’re doing if you’re going to get into it. It has scheduled payments that require you to only pay the interest for a specified amount of time. Sometimes, these are called an IO. Since you’re just paying the interest, they’re a lot lower than anybody who’s paying interest in principal.

I recommend this should only be used by savvy buyers who can handle things with the market changes and if your plans change. If you need to stay in that property because of a highly inflated new payment, once that IO period ends, then you have to be ready to handle it. Not to mention a lot of these IOs will end with a balloon payment where you got to pay everything. The moral of the story is don’t touch ARMs and IOs unless you know what you’re doing.

I have a couple more definitions that go with the ARMs. You’re going to hear the interest rate cap, interest rate ceiling and interest rate floor. The cap or the ceiling for an ARM is a limitation on the amount the interest rate can change per the adjustment over the lifetime of the loan. That will be stated in what they call your note, which is your original loan agreement. It also will have a floor. Don’t think they’re going to let you say, “Everything dropped. I should be able to go to nothing.” You’re going to have a minimum interest rate as specified in the note as well.

This is something that people are asking me a lot about. This I is the Investment property. People get so excited about making money and building an empire. What’s the Google definition? It’s a property purchase to generate rental income, tax benefits or profitable resale rather than to serve as the borrower’s primary residence.

If you are seeking to buy an investment property before your primary residence, which a lot of people ask me about, I have a few things to ask you. First of all, are you savvy enough to predict the equity appreciation on that investment and understand that this is a smarter move for you than replacing your rent with your primary investment that you would live in? The next question I have is, have you included maintenance, property management or vacancy rates in your calculations? All of that is being part of a property owner or a landlord.

HBH 110 | Home Inspection
Home Inspection: If the home has ugly wallpaper, that’s taste, not an imperfection. It’s not something the inspector’s going to call out and something you can ask for a credit or repair. Now, if the home’s kitchen stove, as part of the original contract, doesn’t turn on during an inspection, that’s an issue to discuss with the seller and where you can negotiate a repair or a credit.

I’m seeing a fascination with people reaching out to me who read the show. People want to buy an Airbnb first before they purchase their home. I want to make sure I ask all these people. Have you taken into account all of this? Most importantly, have you done the math on buying an investment home first before you buy your primary residence? Use the same math that I tell people on rent versus buy. You have to think, “Is it better for me to buy or rent?” You have to take that calculation and put that into the equation if you’re thinking about buying an investment property first as well.

For instance, let’s say you can cover all the costs in an investment property before you purchase the home and replace your rent. You have the maintenance, property management and vacancy rates. You’re a genius and you found a great deal. You’re going to gross $1,000 profit on a $2,000 mortgage on an investment. You went out and bought a $350,000 home for 20% down. That’s a $70,000 investment plus $15,000 in closing costs. You’re full PITI is about $2,000. You’re going to have that home but it has to rent at $3,000 a month for you to gross $1,000 in profit.

If you take into account the maintenance, property management and vacancy rates, you’re going to net about $500 a month’s profit. That’s a $ 6,000-a-year profit. From an $85,000 investment, that’s a pretty good return and I understand that except here’s the thing. You’re still paying rent every month. I honestly don’t see how adding up the rent money that you’re throwing away, which could be $2,000 a month or $24,000 a year, is the right call to not address that so you can make a $6,000 profit. Even if you have to resave up your down payment for your house, how many years will it take you to do that to replace your rent with an appreciating asset while we’re in an upward-trending market with rising rates? The longer you wait, the more expensive that’s going to get.

I could get a little bit more into that but hopefully, that makes sense to you and that information should suffice. I ask you this. If you understand all of that, do you still think that buying an investment home before you purchase your home is a good idea? Who knows? Maybe you have some different factors. Maybe you’re living at home for free or you’re buying an investment property first while you live van life for four years. I don’t know.s

In general, for most folks, I don’t see it’s a good idea for them if they’ve never purchased a home before in their life to decide that they’re going to first purchase as an investor. It mathematically doesn’t make sense but philosophically, it can be rough for that to be their first home. Maybe it’s better for you to take care of your house first. At least I believe that’s a good idea.

Speaking of good ideas, HowToBuyAHome.com has everything you ever need to get loads of free advice and guidance from me, a realtor with experience helping first-time buyers. If you go to HowToBuyAHome.com, you’re going to find links to the YouTube page, Instagram and TikTok. If you’re reading this past the summer of 2022, due to the overwhelming response of people feeling overwhelmed, we’re going to be launching the How to Buy a Home Starter Kit on HowToBuyAHome.com.

After years of doing this show, your number one question is, “Where do I start?” That is why we’re launching a How to Buy a Home Starter Kit at HowToBuyAHome.com. Help the show out if you can with five stars and type me a review. It takes 94 seconds. That seems to be the only way people know that I am legit. That is the letter I. I am going to leave you with one more thought. You can do this.

I have a whole bunch more I’s to do but that inspection thing took a long time. It’s important. I’m going to go ahead and call it. That is your home inspection episode. It is important stuff no matter what’s going on in the market to make sure that you understand how an inspection works for you. Make sure that your unicorn team is on top of it and you’re doing everything correctly to know that, A) It’s going show you lots of bad stuff. Don’t be freaked out and, B) What should you be looking for to be freaked out? Remember, your inspection is a fantastic to-do list.Speaking of your to-do list, go to HowToBuyAHome.com. Check out the show and the YouTube channel. There are lots of great stuff on there. You can always find the links to Instagram and TikTok on HowToBuyAHome.com. Keep your eyes out. We’re going to be kicking out a How to Buy a Home Starter Kit. It is the first-time home buyer starter kit coming to you on HowToBuyAHome.com because everyone always asks me, “David, I don’t know where to start.” I’ll tell you where to start because I’ve seen a lot of people finish. I have pictures of people who figured out how to get this done and the cool thing is you can do it too. In fact, I know you can do this.

Important Links

  • YouTube Page – How to Buy a Home podcast – David Sidoni
  • Instagram – @DavidSidoni
  • TikTok – David Sidoni
  • Episode 67 – Past Episode – How High Inflation in Affecting First Time Home Buyers
  • Episode 56 –  Past Episode – The Advanced Hack to Raise Your Credit Score and Get Extra Cash for Your Down Payment

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

You Might Also Be Interested In:

Ep 228 – Interview With Andrew And Melissa Who Did NOT Need 20% Down To Buy And Bought Their First Home In A Matter Of Weeks!
Ep 227 – Using The Internet To Research Your First Home
Ep. 226 – Interview With Aaron And Devany – Planned For A Year And Bought A New Build Home
Ep. 225 – Renting Versus Buying For 2024