Nothing beats experience when it comes to learning. For first-time home buyers, no amount of convoluted realtor advice could ever make you feel truly immersed in the industry than hearing actual stories from buyers themselves. In this episode, we hear five different stories from first-time home buyers across five different phases of the home buying experience. Learn from every one of them and know what to expect in real life from the very beginning down to the very end of getting the keys.

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Real Buyer Bonus Episode #2 – 5 First Time Home Buyer Stories In 5 Different Phases In Last 5 Days

Hear the Real Life Process of Buying Your First Home with Five Buyers in Five Phases in Five Days

Welcome to Bonus Buyer episode number two, five different first-time home buyers in five different phases of the home buying experience. You’re going to be able to learn from every one of them because we’re all going to have to go through all of these phases.

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I’ve actually had five different first-time buyers at five different phases of the process. I figured, what better way to teach you about it than actually give you some real-life stories? I’ll let you know what real-life first-time buyers at the very beginning all the way to the very end getting the keys and everything right in between. There are multiple different phases of buying a home. The reason why we’re doing this podcast and why I want to help you is because there isn’t enough information out there for you. There are not enough people talking to you because the real estate industry is broken. We’re going to try to fix the industry one buyer at a time. We’re going to start a revolution. All of these stories started with trust and I hope this podcast is proven to you that my intention is to help people. It’s by giving you my years of experience in what can be a very complicated process. I want you to be able to download this information into your brain, hang on to it and hopefully learn from it and be able to feel comfortable moving forward. Reading this blog is great, but find your own real estate agent who can help you with this, your own realtor who can help you. You’ve got to interview like crazy and get the trust and work with someone because a lot of the information in this show, about inspections and appraisals and writing your offers and all that stuff, these are things that you need to know. If your realtor isn’t helping you and explaining that to you in plain English and making you feel comfortable, then you chose the wrong realtor and you didn’t read my episode, How to Interview A Realtor. You can even go to David Sidoni’s website. You can download all the questions that I’ve written out for you and you can click on the links and learn all about it. If you’re getting any value out of this, number one, hit subscribe and do me a favor. Pull out your phone, read and review, not because I’m a narcissistic person who needs to hear all these good things. Frankly, I’d rather hear questions from you than your reviews. Tell me what you want to listen to or what you want to hear about and I’ll do that. The reviews are not for me. They’re for other people. We’re trying to start a revolution. I can’t start the revolution without your help. My goal is for you to learn from all these experiences for you to be able to grow. I might sound like I’m venting about my job, but I’m not. I want you to understand how much research you should be putting into this and how much research you should be putting into finding the correct realtor. Not your friend or your cousin, you’re helping them out on their first time doing it. I’m going to tell you five stories about five different phases of a first-time buyer. By the time you finish this podcast, you’re going to know more than many of the realtors and real estate agents out there with the first-time buyer writing an offer for them. You will have experience with five different buyers and they have maybe worked with one. That’s the truth. I’m going to help you, warn you and prepare you a little bit. I also want to give you the tools so you can get out there and get served as you should. I want to give you a rad experience. The reason I want you to have a rad experience is so you can stop paying rent as quickly as you can because that’s more money in your pocket.

Trust Your Realtor

Story number one, we met because I’ve done several transactions with a large corporation in Southern California. I ended up going through the whole process with them. We ended up getting them talking to a lender. After we talked to the lender, the lender said, “They can do it.” They were close and there were a couple of things they had to go over. We went and had some coffee and sat down. Not only did we sit down and had coffee but we also had coffee with their little one and we got to run around the coffee shop together because it was late at night. By the time it was over, I told them, “I don’t think that trying to do this right now is the best thing.” They had an opportunity at the end of their lease to get into a six-month lease. We did the math and we ran all of the equations and we decided to go six months out. That makes the most sense. We decided to resign a lease. If you’re looking to resign your lease and you haven’t been in the situation where you are already talking to a realtor who’s already had you talked to some lenders, you’re making that decision blind. That’s one of the phases. The only way you get your perfect house is if you're buying cash and building it yourself. Click To Tweet Don’t make the decision blind if you’re thinking about doing it. If you think that you’re going to buy in a year, the day that you signed that last lease, you should be out talking to a realtor and a lender and getting somebody to get on your back and help you out. I bet you didn’t expect to hear that. My first-time buyer story would be that I would tell them to go back to renting for another six months. When you tell the truth and you work hard to get people in the best situation for their entire life, it doesn’t matter what it is. I don’t care if I get paid now. I don’t care if I go against the entire mantra that I tell you. I’d love for some of you not to be renting, but financially it wasn’t going to work out.

Start Looking Early

That moves us to buyer number two, who was in phase number two. They know they’re six months out. We went out and looked at some places. They said, “We did the north side of town. Now let’s do the south side of town.” I did a second tour with them and they thought they were going to end up more the north side of town because they wanted to be close to that giant corporation but they ended up liking some of the stuff down south. What’s the advantage of working with a realtor that’s going to go out with you six months before you’re going to buy? Number one, you’re going to get to have plenty of time to review and learn all those places. You might have a bunch of things in your head that you think is correct but when you actually take the time to drive around, look some places and then get in those places because you’re working with a realtor, you’re going to learn something else.

Move Areas

The other big thing about it was two of the eight places that we saw were agents that I have not only worked with but had actually masterminded with, had group sessions working together to try to figure out how we can serve our clients better. Who do you think is going to get that phone call picked up when my clients are ready to buy a home in those areas? The first-time buyer agent who has only done two or three transactions that doesn’t know anybody, let alone know anything about the contract or me, or another experienced agent who can call the other experienced agent in the area because we’d been selling homes together for ten years and played golf together and have lunch? Buyer number three is someone who is excited to buy a house and she ended up having to change her area. We started in one place and we started looking there and the affordability wasn’t working. We spent a couple of weekends looking at houses. I could have easily tried to push her away myself. I can try to explain to her, “I don’t think it’s going to work out,” but sometimes showing is better than telling and I realized that. I knew and we took the time.

There’s my opinion of a condo versus a house in these two areas. I don’t have to live there. I can ask all the questions I want but when she actually walks through, then I get to hear exactly what she thinks of it. When you’re thinking about, “I’ve got to go with the area expert.” Area expert, unfortunately, doesn’t mean squat these days, unless you know exactly where you’re going to buy a house and you know exactly what track you’re going to go in. I got news for you. That’s pretty much the people who have got a ton of extra money. The only way you get your perfect house is if you’re buying cash and building it yourself. The only way that you can buy the house that meets everything that you need is if you’ve got all the wiggle room in the world. That’s not the way it goes. Most of the time, there’s a general area you start in but you end up maybe going somewhere else. The big thing that we got going with her is we put an offer in. I did a video on my YouTube and on my Facebook page talking about location. That’s true but there’s also timing. We’re in a multiple offer situation and if she’d been with a newer agent, someone who hadn’t been through the things. There are also a bunch of new agents in the area where I live that know about multiple offers even though they’re newer. Do you know why? They came and took classes from me and other experienced agents. I teach the class on how to write an offer. This will be a quick little side note before we get to number four. I want you to understand the internet’s won. The real estate industry is going to get raked over in the next ten years. They’re going to get left in the dust more than they already have. In the future, buyers are going to have more and more decisions and they’re going to be thinking more and more about going directly to the internet. The real estate industry isn’t serving you well. Even more than the internet, a large national thing, they’re trying to screw you even worse than that. There are lenders that do it. There are internet companies that do it. If you’ve got cash and you don’t want to buy a house and you don’t really care about it, maybe it’ll work for you. That makes sense. The information is out there. Let’s say you’re trying to get a loan. I’ve seen all these commercials. You cannot get a quick and easy loan. You can get a pizza, you can get shoes delivered to you, you can book a dog walker or a babysitter or a handyman. The way you can do all this stuff on your app or on Amazon really quick on your smartphone, you can’t get a mortgage like that but that’s how they’re selling it. You don't know what you don't know, and you don't know unless you ask. Click To Tweet I was watching sports and we got the NBA Finals. They’re marketing like crazy to everybody with Rocket Mortgage. I love Keegan-Michael Key. He is funny. He’s doing these Rocket Mortgage commercials. I keep seeing it during The Cup and during the NBA Finals. This is a product that’s straight up a weak con. They’re preying on you on something that you feel comfortable with your phone. It’s bigger than this whole art of marketing what they’re doing. It’s bigger than anything else that we can think of. They understand and realize that you do everything on your phone. What’s interesting is because these things that used to feel more cumbersome, you’re starting to realize you can do on your phone. You’re thinking, “I can apply for a mortgage that way.” No, this is so much larger than anything else that you can do at the tap of your phone. You’ve got to go old school. You’ve got to talk to somebody. You’ve got to sit down and you’ve got to find someone cares about you. Rocket Mortgage and the other folks that are telling you, “Don’t go to that scary person out there who’s going to meet you, make you pull out your paperwork, find your taxes and make you do all those horrible things you don’t want to do, do all that adulting. Don’t do that. Press this button. Pull out your phone. It will take you five minutes to get a home loan.” They’re doing it because they realize that they’ve got a great system that you are familiar with right there in your pocket. You’ve also seen a technological revolution. Subconsciously, you think that your phone can do this stuff. It’s not that easy. You can’t do it. You can’t tap and go. You can’t get a loan that way. It’s not like that at all because when you tap or click to purchase something on your phone, you’re giving them your American or Canadian dollars, your Euros, your Rubles, Drachmas. When you tap your phone, that’s when you give them money directly from your bank account. That’s for the goods or the service that they’re giving you. The pizza, the shoes, the ride in their car as a service, the dog walkers as a service. The tap that you do is you’re giving them money. When you tap and you get their money, we’re all the same. No one on the other end of that tap is questioning getting the money from your bank account. They accept the money and they give you the goods of the service. It doesn’t work like that when you tap for a mortgage. That tap, that’s just you giving them money and we’re all the same. No one questions when you’re giving money from a bank account to pay for the goods and services. When you tap to get a mortgage, you are actually tapping to apply for a loan. You’re not buying it. You’re not purchasing a loan at that moment. You’re tapping to apply, but what you’re applying for is a loan for hundreds of thousands of dollars. You do not get it in five minutes. That’s impossible. The reason is that it’s not the same for everybody. All you’ve done when you’ve clicked that button is apply, which is what they want you to do because they want to get your information and grab you and keep hounding you until you eventually go with them and their crappy service because their only goal is to get you to give that information to them. They want to turn you into a lead, not a customer and then they want to pass you on. That person you first talked to, he’s going to pass you up to the chain of command, to their next level of service and their entire goal is to convert you to get the sale. That’s the way the world sees you, as something to convert. They want to capture you and then convert you to money for them. Their goal is not to hear you. It’s not to serve you. It’s not to be there with you wire to wire. It’s not to listen to your goals and try to find a plan that’s going to work best for you. They’re not going to be there start to finish.

If you want to tell your story several times to a whole bunch of different people who are trying to convert you in their crazy chain of business, then tap your phone and get a mortgage because that’s the way it’s going to work. It’s not the same. Think of it that way. You’re not opening your wallet handing somebody money. You’re asking them to apply and every lender knows that every single buyer or what the lenders will call you at that point is a borrower because you’re going to borrow money. They’re going to say that every single one of you is different. They’re going to know every single one of you is different and they’re right. We all have different credit scores, debt, income. We all have a different credit history, different savings accounts. We have different down payment options. Some of us have gifts we can get from families, some of us have a tax refund or retirement funds in withdrawal from some without a tax penalty, some with a tax penalty. There are stocks. You can’t do that by pressing a button. Your savings account might even be exactly the same as mine but do you know how that money got deposited will actually reflect differently in how the bank is going to judge whether or not they want to give you a loan? If you deposit yours over time slowly from your checking account and all of a sudden, I deposited a big chunk of mine and that was all in ones because I figured out that I can go dance at the ladies only night at the retirement home. Banks would see that as a big chunk as opposed to a regular systemized savings and it would be different. All of that takes a lot more than the tap of your phone. You have to interview a lender like I have helped to explain to you how to interview a realtor or you get a badass referral or recommendation from someone that you trust. All those taps to go and tap to make things happen technology, it’s there to capture you. I guarantee you that the actual service that you desire will never ever be completed by the first person that you talk to. They’re the captor and that’s it. That’s their only goal. Adulting sucks but you got to do it. Click To Tweet Buyers number four, Matt and Brandy. We talked about them in our first bonus buyer episode. Here’s what we can learn from them. They are meticulous, smart, organized and wonderful people. It’s so nice to be able to work with them because I know that they’re going to have questions that I’m going to have answers and they’re going to be thrilled that I have those answers. They were not thinking about buying a house. Because they’re the kind of people that you want on your side, they were prepared anyway. Even though they weren’t going to be doing it in months, they were prepared. We’re talking to people who do homework on Friday night, not Sunday night. You never know what could happen with the timing and we found the perfect house for them. Because they were prepared, they had the ability to make a move.

Be Prepared

It was a little quicker than they wanted to but it was great. If you’re thinking about buying a house, don’t press a button on your smartphone and don’t think that you could just get in the car with the realtor and go out there and have fun. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard stories about people going, “I really want to buy a house but I don’t have prequalification. I didn’t know anything about my 401(k). I didn’t know I could take money out of it.” There are a million things that you didn’t know if you don’t know. You don’t know what you don’t know and you don’t know unless you ask. The only way you ask is to #Adult. Adulting sucks, but you’ve got to do it. This is not a pizza. It’s not an Uber to brunch. This is something serious. I really desperately want you to be prepared and be ahead of time because I messed up big time in my twenties. I lost a lot of money, $300,000 to $400,000 and that’s ‘90s dollars.

Get Your Keys

Buyer number five, Molly, Ryan and Wyatt got their keys to their very first house. These were my buyers that are fired for the fact that when you’re thinking about things in the larger picture, don’t go with preconceived notions. The cool thing about this is baby Wyatt was a week and a half old. He’s a brand-new infant, but they figured out that was a great time because they were sitting at home. They got on the computer and found all the great internet sites that I gave to them and started looking for that house. On the recap, number one, trust your realtor so much that your realtor is going to tell you it’s actually financially smarter for you to rent. If you’re holding back from your realtor, if you’re not giving your realtor all the information. It’s like the way you go into a sales store and the guy goes, “How can I help you?” You absolutely 100% need a pair of pants but you’re like, “No, I’m fine. I’m just looking.” Don’t do that with your realtor. Don’t do that with your lender. Take the time. If you want to do that because you’re going to walk away and know you’re not going to use that guy, that’s fine. Once you decide to move forward, things get more messed up when you hold information back because we don’t know what to tell you. These guys were open and honest with me and when we really ran the numbers, they’ve got a couple of little things that they’ve got to do. It made sense to work this lease for six more months. Number two is going to be recapping William and Jeanette. They are buyers who aren’t going to be ready to buy until 2020, but we’ve already had one good long meeting together. We’ve already had one weekend where we went out and looked at houses. We took another weekend and went out and looked at houses because of the fact that that’s the way I decided that first-time buyers deserve much time and attention. That’s the kind of unicorn realtor that you want. Also, the years of experience means that a couple of the places that we looked at, there was already an established relationship with the agents on the other side, which in the long run is going to help out these first-time buyers. Buyer number three is my gal, Kimberly, who was starting in one part of town. She moved 35 minutes away and was dealing with multiple offers. Thank goodness that we had an opportunity to do it together because it would have been rough if she was working with a rookie. As a matter of fact, I went to go look at houses because we’re still in multiple offers. She’s not in escrow or under contract as it is in certain parts of the country. They call it that. The other house that I went to go look at had 196 people go look at it. Halfway through the open house, it already had four offers on it. Is it always going to be like that? No. That’s why I want you to get out there and work with someone who has been through it and has seen all the different levels. Your friend who bought a house six weeks ago, your situation’s going to be completely different than theirs. Your parents or your friends or your uncle who bought a home three years ago, it’s wildly different. You’ve got to know the timing and work with someone who’s active every single day in the market. Number four, Matt and Brandy. Be prepared. They’re my little boy and girl scouts. Number five, Wyatt and Wyatt’s parents. The kid is super young and has a place to live. Where do you find all this stuff? It’s at DavidSidoni.com. I’m on Instagram and Twitter and all that. A lot of you reached out to me through Instagram. There’s the How to Buy A Home page on Facebook. Go to DavidSidoni.com. That’s where you’re also going to get links to YouTube where there are videos with some deeper information about some of the stuff that we talked on the show. You can subscribe there. There are some more educational videos on there too and I would love if you leave me some questions there.

Important Links:

• How to Interview A Realtor – previous episode
• Rocket Mortgage
• Instagram – David Sidoni
• Twitter – David Sidoni
• How to Buy A Home – Facebook page
• YouTube – David Sidoni
• YouTube – Buying your first home. Location, location, location – or timing?
• Facebook – Buying your first home. Location, location, location – or timing?

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!