The Decision to Invest in Buying Real Estate

Have you noticed how the experts are always telling us that there's not just a right way to do things but a right time as well? You're supposed to eat your meals at specific times through the day when your digestion is supposed to be the strongest, exercise at the times your body is best able to deliver power, and you are even supposed to work at specific times when your brain is at its most alert. There's a right time to buy and sell stocks too. Is it any wonder then that they should tell you that buying real estate is a decision you’re supposed to take up at the right time?

Well, ask yourself this – is it the right time right now to sell real estate when home prices are completely depressed? But we aren't talking about the best market to buy or sell in. We're talking about the best time for you personally, to get into buying real estate.

Buying at the wrong time in your life could really make things unpleasant for you. For instance, if you haven't had enough time to get your credit score where it should be, if you aren't married yet or haven't decided on what part of the country to settle in, it might be a bad time to get into buying real estate. Let's take a closer look.

Income stability is the first thing you want to have lined up buying real estate. When people get into their first well-paying job and their company seems to be in great shape and business seems to be booming, they're very optimistic usually about their chances for the future. A home loan though runs to at least 10 years usually. That's a long time to depend on business success today. Basically, you don't want to get yourself into any long-term commitments before you completely sure that this super successful company you're working for isn't a dot-com bubble company or something.

It can be really hard to depend on a marriage lasting these days. But you don't really want to get yourself into a 15-year commitment with a house if you're not really married or in a long-term relationship yet. Get into buying real estate now at this point and you don’t know how things will change when you meet someone. You may want to move to a different part of the country or the world for instance. Basically, before you chain yourself to a house or anything, you basically want to make sure that the house is where you want to be.

Which brings us to another question to do with not being married. How you know how large the house is to be? Are there going to be kids say near future for instance? What are your other goals for the house? Do you want to be in the suburbs near where the good schools are? Do you want it to be close enough to your job that you could walk?

If you're telling yourself you could just buy the house as an investment and wait for the prices to go up and make you an awesome profit, you can't really be sure that's exactly how things will go in today's kind of market.

The point is basically, that buying real estate needs to be a hard-nosed business decision. It can't be a sentimental one.

Your Strategy for How to Find a Real Estate Agent That You Can Trust

When it comes to the opinions people hold about real estate agents, they are something like the opinions they have a for lawyers – it's not that they hate them, it's just that they find so many who aren't to their liking (to say the least). It doesn't help that they charge as much as they do for their services too. It predisposes people to disliking them right off. Basically, it's pretty easy to say that to find a real estate agent that you can like and can work with, is not an easy matter.

If you find it hard to tolerate your real estate agent, just think about how hard it must for him to tolerate himself. Like Annette Bening in American beauty, most of them hate the job. There are about 1 million realtors working at the job at any given time in America. Nine out of ten quit within the first year. Of those that remain, many quit in the next five years. All of which goes to say that if you're going to find a real estate agent, you'd better work really hard to find someone who likes his job and is a good at his job. Here are a few pointers.

About the first thing you want to do when you try to find a real estate agent you can like and trust is – go with word-of-mouth. Ask everyone you know if they've worked with a real estate agent who's really good. You want to be careful that you don't ask someone who has a budding realtor in the family and who’ll just palm him off on you. Go ask someone you trust. Once you do get your referrals, you do need to do your best to research them on Internet.

One good way to check a real estate agent out in real life would be to visit an open house that he is selling. You can size them up there. You can also sign up for a couple of home buying or home selling seminars. There are always a few realtors there. You can meet with them and find out how they work. You'll also learn a lot about buying and selling homes at the seminar.

Basically, you're looking for a realtor who’s successful. The capable ones usually put out lots of ads in the local papers. The ones that have the most ads are the ones who have the most customers. You could give them a try.

Once you do have an agent or two that you're keen on (not that way), you need to work on your sizing-up method. How do you decide which one to go with? Going with your gut feeling could be one way to do it. You may instinctively like one person and not the next. But of course, your gut can be outrageously wrong at times. Ask them about how long they've been in the business, whether they sell property full-time, how long they expect it to take to sell a house once they get a listing, and so on.

Realtors come in two varieties – some are buyer agents, and some are seller’s agents. If you are a buyer, you want to go with buyer’s agent and so forth. This is important. If you are a buyer and you're going with a seller’s agent, it's a conflict of interest for the realtor. Try to talk to them about how they plan to go about selling your home (if you are there to sell).