Purchase: steps to comply

When you purchase a property, you are building your future. Either to live there or to invest, purchase a home is a complex process. A professional advice is essential not to make mistakes.

We advise you to follow some essential steps: by beforehand planning your project out, you will save time and find the property which best matches what you expect and your financial capacities. Then, signing of contracts will be the last step not to ignore.

1. Plan his project out

It is one of the most essential steps which require an open mind and not hesitate to listen to the professional’s opinion.

Ask yourself the right questions. First of all, why do you want to purchase a property? to become a home-owner, expending the family, an urge to change or invest. Your property’s characteristics will depend on this first answer.

Then, ask yourself what you need as regards: surface area, number of rooms, number of equipment (bathroom), garage, parking lot, and parking space. Those are the main characteristics of every property and over which you will not have to compromise.

Finally, ask yourself about what you want as regards: new and older buildings; the type of property: detached house, attached house, apartment; hangout; the distance to get work, day-nursery, school, green spaces, etc… As regard those features, you should be able to agree your choices to be modified. Put these characteristics into an ascending order of importance in your opinion.

Above all, pay attention to your real estate agent’s advices, as a real estate professional he knows the market and will be able to suggest you a selection of property matching your expectations.

2. Find a home

The help of a real estate agent is often essential at this step. He will make you save time by selecting properties which match your characteristics or which could make you charmed.

Once this selection made, get started to visit. These visits have to make you get a lot of information in order to make the most careful choice. Even a sudden impulse has to be well-considered toward many criteria. Pay attention more particularly to ask information about :

The dilapidated state of the building (be it for a co-ownership or for a detached house)
The foundations’ states
The co-ownership service charge, the possible refurbishing work to do
The building’s “upkeep notebook” (work done from the construction or the buying)
The diagnosis and the related-work to don
And finally, everything you can get about the parking space and the district life.

Whether you like a property, that it matches most of your criteria and its “health state” suits you, therefore you will have to visit it many times more: you should come at many moments of the day to consider the sunshine, the outside noise and the one inside the co-ownership.

Also, feel free to speak with the neighborhood to get information about the market into the district. By doing so, you will have a good idea about your property’s price and how easy the resale will be.

3. Find his financing

You now have to pay for your future purchase. Your real estate agent may still be a helpful adviser by introducing the right contacts to you, speaking with you about the steps to comply, and the traps to avoid.

The first thing to do for your financing search is to determine your financing capacities, by taking into account your monthly budget and how much is left after this budget is determined.

You then have to get in touch with one or more banks to get your loan(s). Contact your banker and do not hesitate to involve the competition. Once more, your real estate agent may be a helpful partner since he will be able to send you to the organizations which may best match your profile and expectations.

To know more about your property’s financing

4. Signing the contacts

A buying is divided into two contractual steps. The first one is the signing of a pre-contract which make you forced to close the transaction in the determined delay depending on certain conditions and subject to the achievement of certain steps.

This pre-contract allows to beforehand settle every details of the future sale and to give the non professional buyer a revocation right.

The second step is the signing of the final bill of sale, which only occurs if all of the suspensive conditions have been removed. A suspensive condition is a clause which stops the bill’s signing and so the sale transaction if what it stipulates does not occur.

For instance, for buying a building plot, a suspensive condition may be to obtain the building permit. So, if the future buyer does not get this building permit, the sale of the building plot will not occur. The most common suspensive conditions are related to the getting the financing by the buyer.

Many diagnosis are more and more asked nowadays to inform the buyer. They are mandatory and may involve the home-owner in bringing his property into compliance with standards. Check if you have those documents and do not hesitate to ask your real estate agent for advices.

Signing the bill of sale will make you definitely home-owner of the property. You has to be notified of a certificate before signing, letting you a delay of at least a month in order to ask questions and modifications. Take the time needed to be told everything you might have not or wrongly understood.

All these steps are sometime tiresome and an involvement that important has to be taken seriously. It is why the help of the real estate agent as a professional adviser is necessary, for any real estate project.