Five Smart Homebuying Tips for Our Fall Sacramento Market

Are you looking for homebuying tips to buy a home in our fall Sacramento real estate market? As a potential home buyer, you are now in a wonderful position to buy a home. Some of you got too frustrated with the market and gave up. Maybe it’s time to give the market another look? Because our seller’s market is over. O.V.E.R. Except for a small handful of picture-perfect listings, you probably will not encounter multiple offers for a home you want to buy.

I could give you all the reasons why the market has changed, but not everyone is interested in how we got here or the stats. Most buyers just want to know what they need to do buy a home. They want to be aware of the types of benefits can get they out of today’s market.

Of course, if you are already working with the exclusive buyer’s agents on the Elizabeth Weintraub Team, then you’re covered. Your buyer’s agent is already informing you of the choices awaiting your decision. Here are my top 5  homebuying tips that you can confidently put to use when you’re ready to buy.

Homebuying Tips for Sacramento’s Fall Market

1. Price. Most listings will contain a bit of room for negotiation. It might not be necessary to offer list price for the home, unless you are madly in love with it. You can probably offer less and still buy the home. Ask your agent to show you comparable sales. This means considering homes in the same condition, square footage, location and comparing the pricing. Look at apples versus apples and not apples versus oranges.
2. Closing Costs. If you’re a first-time home buyer, you might be using every dime you have saved up to buy a home. With an FHA loan, your down payment can be 3.5% of the purchase price. We have conventional loans from 3% down. Does that leave you with enough money to pay closing costs? If not, don’t sweat it, as many sellers in this real estate market will agree to pay your closing costs for you, provided the sellers are content with the sales price offered.
3. Repairs and Updates. Believe it or not, sellers want to work with you. If the home has no AC, for example, the seller might be willing to install new AC for you. Don’t be put off by carpeting because you can generally work out a way for it to make it vanish. Ask your buyer’s agent for ideas and help. We had a seller recently agree to install new granite counters at closing. Sellers generally will not fix or repair every single defect from a home inspection. But a major repair will most likely get fixed.
4. Inspections. It is possible in our fall market that sellers might obtain inspections at their own expense. For example, it is more common now for the seller to pay for a pest report, and most buyers would ask for a completion certificate. This did not happen very often in a seller’s market but now that we are entering a more neutral market, sellers are more agreeable. They don’t want surprises that will blow up a transaction any more than you do.
5. Time of Year. With our increased inventory in Sacramento, home buyers have more options now than ever. If you don’t like a particular house, don’t buy it. There will be another right around the corner. As we move toward the holidays, prices will become softer. This is a much better time to buy a home than spring, when you compete with a larger group of buyers. You have little competition now.

With all of these benefits, buyers are finally in a position to feel really good about buying a home. The only question left lingering is whether it’s better to buy now or wait until spring. Apart from the increased competition in spring, you will also see interest rates rise. The Feds have already raised the rates, and they are inching toward 5%. Buy now before you get roped into a higher interest rate mortgage because this much is pretty certain. Interest rates are not coming back down.

To get started, all you have to do is call Elizabeth Weintraub at 916.233.6759.