Buying Your First Home

After eighteen years of wedded bliss, circumstances forced my wife and I to consider buying our first home. The six-month roller-coaster ride that we subsequently experienced provided its share of thrills (and chills), but here we are, resting our heads nightly in our own home (well, ours and the bank's home, that is).

Although I wouldn't recommend that anybody wait until they're nearly 50 years old to buy their first home, I also wouldn't want you to go about it in the half-cocked, unknowing manner that we used to find and buy our home, either. Learn from my sorry experience and make a vow to yourself to do it better than we did. Here are a few hard-won tips to help you along your way.

DO YOUR HOMEWORK!
Shop around for the best deal on a mortgage that you can find. Online resources like Lending Tree can be helpful, even if you decide not to go with any of their lenders, because you can see what sort of financial products are available and at what interest rates. Your hometown bank is another potential lender, and if you have a good relationship with your bank, you might be able to negotiate a more attractive rate.

Do the research, both online and through financial magazines, and see if there are any first time homeowner's programs that you might qualify under. Go with the cheapest rate that you can get, because even a quarter-point difference in percentage can mean a savings of thousands of dollars over the life of the mortgage loan. Visit consumer-oriented web sites like the Motley Fool and go through their tutorial on home buying. When you're comfortable with esoteric concepts like "points" and know the difference between "fixed rate" and "variable" mortgages and you've chosen your lender, fill out the initial mortgage application and get a "pre-approval" for a certain dollar amount that you can use as a guideline when shopping around for your home.