Mortgage Resources

Good evening, everybody. Welcome to The Village Bank. My name is Amy Werner. I’m the chief retail marketing and community relations officer here. This is part of our learning series, and this has been a very successful program that we’ve offered. 

This offers you the opportunity to ask directly to our wonderful panel here specific questions that you might have about the lending and mortgage buying process. Some people coming in. I’d like to invite up Stephanie Lewers. 

She’s our senior vice president of mortgage lending here, residential lending at The Village Bank. And she’ll kind of kick us off. Just some housekeeping ideas. We are taping the panel. Just so you know that, if you are in the line of camera, you will be on camera because we’re going to put this on our website as well as use just some of the tools. 

So you can always come back to our website, village-bank.com, to look at today’s session. We have some food in the back, so help yourself get up. Bathrooms are through the door to the right. All right? 

So welcome and thank you. I also ask that we leave questions towards the end so that we can kind of get through the panel, and then there’ll be a Q&A at the end. Thank you. Thank you, Amy. 

Hi, everyone. 

I just wanted to say hi, and my name is Stephanie Lewers. I am senior vice president of residential lending. We have a great panel here today. I’m very excited to hear from each of them, so we’ll learn everything from the initial process of getting a pre-approval to home shopping to the inspection process all the way to closing. 

So I’m very excited. So I’ll kick it off to June Hudnall, who is loan officer at The Village Bank. Hi there, everybody. Yes, I’m June Hudnall. I’m a mortgage originator here at the bank. In fact, we have another one back here hiding in the corner, Sharon Dillon. 

In the red is another mortgage originator. We have some really great folks at The Village Bank, and I’ll be interested in chatting with you all if you decide to pursue coming to us. us to find out more. 

So, at this point, I’d really like to introduce the folks we have here. You’re in for a treat. Okay, so this lovely lady is Darlene Umina, and she is from LaMacchia Realty. She’s going to be telling us a great deal. 

We have Sean here, Sean Rizzo, who is a home inspector. I learned a lot from Sean last year. And down at the end, we have Wendy. Wendy Kamens from Kriss Law. Okay, and I think Darlene’s going to start us out with a really great slide presentation. 

Absolutely. Now, one question I forgot to ask is how we control the slides. Oh, okay. Very close. Can you guys hear me okay? Okay. All right. So, as mentioned, my name is Darlene Umina. And I am the team lead of Darlene & Company at LaMacchia Realty. 

You can go to the next slide. So just to give you an idea of some of my background, I’m associated with Zillow as the best of Zillow, top 1.5% of the country nationwide through real trends of all agents nationally. 

Boston Magazine, top producer. I have a Bachelor’s in Science from Providence College if I have any PC people in the house. As far as track record, over 250 million sold and over 400 units, close to 450, licensed since 07. 

So that just gives you a background on what you’re hearing today is based on experience and track record and knowing exactly what’s going on in the market today. All right, so congratulations, first and foremost. 

You guys are here to start the process of home buying. Is everybody a first-time home buyer or do we have any second time or great? So one of the best things that you can do is to start to dream about where you want to be. 

And this is what I kind of advise all of my buyers. Set some time aside with you and any other decision makers. Sometimes we have parents involved in the process or sometimes it’s siblings buying a home together. 

Whoever is going to be a decision maker, sit down, maybe, you know, make it fun, have dinner, a couple of cocktails, set up a breakfast or a brunch and write down all the important stuff that you want in your home. 

Whether that’s, you know, three beds, two baths, a picket fence, do you want a condo, do you want to be in the city, do you want to be walkable? Like really think about all those things and get excited about where you want to be. 

And then you can go to the next one. Perfect, so what you want to do is think about what life is going to look like for the next three to five years. Are you planning on having children? Are you maybe paying off doctor loans for the next five years and your income is going to be freed up beyond that? 

You want to look at it. At what you’ll need for the next three to five years. So what are the needs and what are the nice to haves? And again, write those down. Also things to consider, schools, again, walkability, shopping, I have some clients tell me like they need to be really close to a golf course. 

So up here in New England, it’s a little different than the communities that you hear about down South, they’re on golf courses, but whatever’s important to you. And make those ideas concrete, because it’ll really help you to stay focused when the market is asking you to drift. 

So it’ll be absolutely a temptation at 1 a.m. when you’re on Zillow and you’re not seeing any homes in your exact preferred location. And you’re like, well, let me see what’s available over here and let me see what’s available over here. 

Certainly it’s fun to play. I am guilty of the same things when I am buying for my own family. But again, having those ideas set down concrete will just lead you back so that you know you’re not compromising anything. 

Now also is the time to visit the different towns. You know, you might have your eyes, your sights set on Lexington, and, but you don’t know much about it. And you’re maybe a little hesitant to go to open houses because you’re not quite ready. 

Well, go and spend some time in the towns, go to the farmer’s markets, go to the playgrounds. I also advise people to go to the grocery stores. Like, does it feel like this could be home for you? Whether or not there’s a house for you to go visit right now. 

You can go to the next one. All right, so now it’s time to shop. So we’re going to do house hunting one-to-one. And one thing just to keep in mind, we are in a low inventory market. I’m assuming with the news being the way it is that everyone has heard that in one capacity or another, you know, low inventory, low inventory. 

So in a low inventory market, I ask my clients to keep an open mind. Sometimes we have like the right kind of wrong. And, you know, what that means is maybe you wanted four bedrooms, but we find a three bedroom and an office. 

And you’re like, you know what, this will work. And you’re going to feel that right kind of wrong as soon as you feel it and be like, this is it, this is okay. So in a low inventory market, try to keep an open mind. 

Sometimes it’s, I don’t want to be on a busy street or on a double yellow. And we go see a double yellow and you’re like, well, it is on a double yellow, but it is a quiet street. So that’s just some examples of, again, making sure that you’re keeping an open mind and kind of feeling the right kind of wrong. 

Now, to be successful when hunting for homes, we want to make sure that you’re fully available to see houses. So oftentimes with, you know, the people that I’m working with, they will, they’re just so busy and, which is a glorious thing, but they’ll be like, I really love this house, but I’m going to South Carolina for a bachelorette party. 

I really love this house, but I’m, you know, I decided to pick up some extra shifts at work, which is of course great for the bottom line and building your down payment. But when it’s time, you want to be fully available to see them, especially on the weekend. So just keep that in mind because we’re in a very tight market as far as timeline. And you guys probably see this even from whatever platforms you’re following, but typically homes list on a Thursday and they’re off the market by Monday or Tuesday. 

And I know that sounds scary, so don’t let that scare you, but the time to see them is the weekend. We don’t always have time during the week. So be available. If you love a house online, make sure you’re telling your agent as soon as possible. 

And that’s only because sometimes the house won’t necessarily be available until the open house. They might start showings on Friday. The open house is Sunday and you show up and you’re so excited and you bring your parents and you took the shift off from work and the house has gone and the open house is canceled. 

So you wanna make sure you’re keeping an open line of communication with your agent so that you know the house is fully available. And most importantly that you can get in earlier if it’s something that you truly love. 

With all of these different platforms, so Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com. They’re trying to get you to call so they can sell their leads. So you might see, oh, this house is available right now. 4 p.m. I can go look. 

Oh, goodie. Let me tell my agent I’m ready. That might not be true. So one thing that we say is just, you know, similarly, just like a house might not last until the open house, they also might be telling you we can’t see it until Saturday. 

They’re telling you that it’s true. Trust them. You want to pay attention to offer deadlines. So a good agent is going to try their hardest to get you an offer accepted prior to the deadline just because it cuts out competition. 

So make sure you’re paying attention to those deadlines, paying attention to market inventory, the best off-market inventory, I’m sorry. The best deals don’t hit the market. I’m sure you guys have heard a lot about this off-market and maybe you’re like, how do I access that? 

What are these people talking about? It’s one thing that definitely is sensationalized by agents to make everybody look like they have something that the next agent doesn’t have. And while that is true to a certain point, it’s not like it’s a plentiful situation. 

Don’t worry that you’re missing out on too much. But if you have the opportunity to see something before it hits the market, definitely go. You’re going to be cutting out the competition. Don’t be afraid of higher days on market. 

So what’s days on market? You’re listed, you know, say May 1st and it’s now May 28th and there’s 28 days on market. So most buyers will see that and be like, oh, there’s something wrong with the house. 

And the reality is most of the time, the only thing that’s wrong with the house is the price. These sellers were reaching a little bit. They were looking at, you know, maybe when inventory was a little bit lower and their neighbor got a higher price. 

So just know that there might not be anything wrong with house and that if you hop on that, you’re usually going to get a better deal. So those are just some things to keep in mind for getting ready to search. 

Now, what to look for? So the vibe is right. You like the flow of the home, the size of the home, the location of the home. So now we have to focus on the bones and making sure that it’s truly a good home. 

And so this is a showing checklist that I provide my buyers with, that we try to go over at the house to make sure that we’re checking all the right things before you put an offer in. So you can see some of those items there, but you know, agent condition of roof, the water heater, were their permits pulled when work was done, evidence of leaking or mold. 

So once we go through all those items, again, the vibe is right, you like the home, you like the neighborhood, now we know the bones are good, now it’s time to write an offer. And remember that it’s also time to trust your agent to steer you in the right direction, you did hire them for a reason. 

But first and foremost, you wanna check the current market conditions. So depending upon how aggressive you wanna be about searching, it could be months or weeks in between when you’ve written your last offer. 

And during that time in a market like today, there are many things that can change. So you wanna, you know, again, check in with them, make sure they have their pulse on the market, they might be listing a buyer’s agent, which is good because it gives both perspectives. They see what’s coming across their desk for the listings and they also have their pulse in the market for buyers. But as an example, three weeks ago, there were talk of tariffs and that actually led to homes that typically would be getting multiple offers, five, six offers, getting no offers. 

And the interesting thing about that was the rates were down and yet buyer confidence went with it. So a lot of these homes that had brought in multiple offers actually brought in no offers. And then if you fast forward to today, if you were gonna go out and shop for homes this weekend, what you’d see is the highest inventory that we’ve had so far this year. 

And that’s based on a few factors. We’re in New England, people that are listing, they really want their houses to look nice, they want their grass to be green, they want their flowers out. So that’s one reason to hold inventory. 

But also last weekend and the weekend before that were school vacation bookend weekends. So either they weren’t home, a lot of sellers you’d think that that would work out. They’re not home, it’s easy to show their house, but they like to be around, they like to make sure everything’s secure. 

And they wanna make sure if they’re being advised by a good agent that they’re getting the most demand. So a lot of sellers were holding their homes. So that’s why this weekend, we’re actually gonna see quite a bump in inventory. 

It’s making conditions for buyers quite good. The next 60 to 90 days are gonna be the biggest sort of boom for real estate. Cause again, the inventory will keep going up. The buyers are the most motivated in the spring. 

A lot of people are trying to get in before the school system, before school. So you’ll close July 1st and your kids will be ready for school. But what we’re seeing with this busy market is a lot of waived contingencies. 

So June asked me to be honest about what we’re seeing in the marketplace. And it’s a mix of things depending upon people’s price points. But things that I’m seeing from my listings that come across my desk, waived inspections, which Sean will talk about thankfully is hopefully going by the wayside very soon. 

And we’re all very excited about that. some creative mortgage language, and also some appraisal language, people coming up with potentially making up the difference for appraisal spreads, tightening up timelines. 

So those are some things that I’m seeing today. And then lastly, where I see most agents making mistakes, and this is why you wanna make sure that you’re doing your due diligence and interviewing them appropriately, is that they’re advising buyers to be more aggressive than they need to be. 

So they’re hearing these things, they’re hearing the sensationalism in their own offices or on the news or whoever they follow on social media. And instead of paying attention to, ooh, inventory went up and having very important conversations with the listing agent, they’re again, advising their buyers to do things that they don’t have to do, whether it’s waving an inspection, being more aggressive with price. 

So for myself, I have two recent examples. I had a home I had listed in Sudbury, and we had no offers on the table. The buyer came out the gate with their agent, 25,000 above asking and waived everything, waived the inspection, waived their mortgage contingency. 

Now, there’s no competition and there was no competition coming in. And if she asked the right questions, she would have been able to give a much more, first of all, a better deal for her buyers, but also a less stressful transaction. 

Similarly, I had another home listed two weeks ago where a buyer ended up paying 100,000 over asking, again, not necessary. So you wanna make sure that you’re hiring the right agent to ask the right questions, to make sure that they’re not making poor decisions on your behalf. 

And then when you are ready to write the offer, it’s the seller’s typically in the driver’s seat, even in a low inventory market. Your agent’s gonna pull comps for the neighborhood and make sure they can substantiate pricing and come to you with the information to be the most aggressive to get you the house. 

If you’re not comfortable, you tell them, I’m not comfortable with this, it’s a little too aggressive for me. And that’s totally fine. It should be all about you and your comfort level. Sorry, I’m getting long winded. 

I’m gonna almost wrap up. The next slide is just a sample buyer timeline to kind of give you that 10,000 foot view. Typically this is about a six week scenario. So obviously it takes as long as it takes to find the home. 

But once you find the home, you do the offer to purchase, your initial deposit, which is usually, I’m seeing between one and 5,000, inspection timeline, and you’ll hire a wonderful home inspector like Sean here. 

And then you go through the purchase and sale with Wendy. And in the meantime, your home mortgage process is running in the background, including your appraisal. And this all wraps up in about six weeks. 

And then my last slide is just being ready to strike. So now that you have, again, this 10,000 foot view, here are some takeaways to be ready. So you want your rock solid pre-approval, which June is gonna talk about with you. 

You wanna understand what your payments look like so that you can make quick decisions during negotiations, like always know what happened with the rates. You might, you know, if you check in before the weekend, you might be like, oh, wow, I have another hundred thousand in spend. 

Or similarly, you might be like, oh, Oh, geez, my spend went down because the rates went up a little bit. So just make sure you know about rates. Know your exact liquid funds available so that you can be comfortably, we can advise you on what to offer for your deposits. 

And if parents are playing a part, for example, making sure that you know what your parents are willing to give you. And then lastly, as we discussed, keep your pulse on what the agent’s telling you that they’re seeing in the marketplace because they’re the ones that truly know. 

It’s not the news, it’s not your parents. Make sure you’re talking to your agent about what they’re seeing. That’s it. Very interesting, thank you, thank you. So, excuse me, are any of you actively looking for property right now? 

No, it’s kind of on the back burner, you’re thinking about it. So, as I said, I’m a mortgage originator here for The Village Bank. What exactly does that mean? What do I do? What’s happening in this process? 

So one of the things that Darlene alluded to is, you need a pre-approval if you’re going to get started on this process. She kind of intimated here how fast things can go, okay? They move really quickly. 

Once it’s on the market, once people start seeing it, offers can come in quickly. So you want to be ready. You want to have your ducks in a row. That means you do not want to call me on a Friday afternoon and say, I’m going to put an offer in on this house tonight. 

I need a pre-approval. Please don’t do that. So, okay, pre-approvals. In the old days, there were conditional approvals that were really not terribly valid, okay? But it was kind of a, you walk in the office, if all of this is true, then yes, we will lend to you X. 

I’m sure Darlene will tell you nowadays, what they want to see is a full underwrite, which is what we do at The Village Bank. So we’re going to ask you for the documentation we need to say, we’re going to give you X number of dollars regardless of the house you’re looking at, okay? 

Because you are qualified for so much, all right? And that piece of paper is really important because that’s what you’re going to hand to Darlene. And then she is going to say, okay, this is what I can show the sellers that you are already approved for. 

So that’s vital. I’m going to tell you, I prefer that you give five days into that, okay? Just because by the time you’ve gotten your documents into me, the underwriters made a decision. It’s going to be four to five days in there. 

So please think that through. The pre-approval is very important. What you’re going to do after that, once you’ve gotten the document in your hand and you found your house with her, you’re going to say, I want to put in an offer and your seller is going to accept your offer, at that point, you’re going to call me and say, June, I found it, okay? I’ve got the place, I’ve got the offer, I’m so excited, I want to go ahead. At that time, I’m going to say, we’re going to flip your application to a live application because now we know the address. 

We know the amount. We know the things that we need to know in order to go forward. I will talk with you, and I will ask you a lot of questions, it’s kind of an interview process so that I know more about what it is you’re looking at, and a little bit more about you. 

An application is four pages, a borrower’s summary, and a lender’s page. That doesn’t tell me a whole lot about you, so I will call you and ask you questions, and I just want to know more about what the situation is with you and what you’re looking for. 

I do the applications with Sharon too, sometimes. And then after me, it moves on to someone else. Now, I used to work in commercial lending, and it was a massive, massive thing. I just want you to know. 

One of the reasons people come to The Village Bank is that it’s so close-knit that everyone knows everybody else, that everyone that you are talking to says, oh, please go to The Village Bank. They’re great, OK? 

All of the people that are involved with making this happen for you work in a very small space, OK? There are just a few of us. One important one is over there in the corner hiding. That’s Leah. She’s our major processor, and she’s fabulous, OK? 

So once it leaves me, it will go to Leah or a different processor, and they amass the documents that I’ve asked for. These will be things like credit report, the credit report, the tax returns, and they’ll be looking at the title for you and ordering an appraisal. 

She’ll get all of that together so that it can go to an attorney, I mean, to an underwriter, excuse me. The underwriters at that point will look over everything. Hopefully, by that time, the appraisal will have come in. 

They can see it, and then they can make a determination on your loan. You will get a copy of that appraisal, so you’ll know exactly what happened and what came in on it. It’s important what the appraisal comes in for, because we lend a certain amount based upon that appraisal. 

Now, we do have first-time homebuyer programs, and so typically what you’ve probably heard is 20% down on loans in the past, and there are a lot of those loans. We do have some 10% down without MIP, mortgage insurance premium, so that’s something you might consider as well. 

Also, in this neighborhood, Newton does affordable housing periodically. They will come up with an option that says, we have a property with a condo in such and such a place. It’s a lottery, you’d need to get your pre-approval in first to them and they want to see that and then they’re going to draw on the lottery. 

But please know that when you’ve gotten a pre-approval from us that’s even with 10% down, that means if it doesn’t work out at the lottery it might work out somewhere else. Now we have a particular lending area, all banks do, and we do tend to go predominantly in that lending area. 

If you want to go outside the lending area you would need to let me know and these are the kind of questions that go to that lady right there, Stephanie Lewers, to make a decision about whether we can go outside the lending area. 

Okay, so these are all important things to think through. Yes, 45 days to 60 days is probably common within a purchase. You want to give yourself some time. Things happen that are outside our control. 

If there’s a title issue, there taxes, maybe it’s in a flood zone, cars, probably not. But those are the things that you might want to think through and know that could possibly happen. So the process seems scary, but with the right people involved, they make it work for you and really are in your camp to try to make it good. 

When we get to Wendy down there and she starts talking about insurance, the title insurance, the owner’s title, I will be giving you what’s called a loan estimate within a couple of days and that’s telling you what your closing costs are probably going to be. 

The importance of that is that there’s some big ticket items on there. And I just want to let you know some of the biggest parts of that are lender’s title, which is required, checking to make sure that there’s no title issues on the property, but also owner’s title from your standpoint happens just once at purchase. 

I have brought some papers with me that you might look over that tell you the importance of owner’s title. A lot of people go into this experience with no concept of that. You might want to take one of those and look it over, okay? 

I brought some cards here. I’m happy to talk with you at any time. I also do not only the purchases, refinances, construction loans, mass save loans, home equities, so kind of a jack of all trades here. 

And if something comes in and you want to talk about maybe gifts from family as part of the down payment, we can have those discussions too. So feel free to call me at any time. Now that I say that, I’m going away for a week to Disney World, but after Disney World, call me at any time and you’re welcome to these. 

Okay, Sean, take it away. So do you, more people stand. Absolutely. They might be, and go in front there, must be the Italian. Oh, Sean? Oh, but do I need that? I don’t want to mess up the whole, what we’re trying to do here. 

Will you be able to hear me from this, cameraman? Okay. I’ll go back over here. Sorry. It’s all right. Let’s put this right there. That’s all right. I’ll stand by. 

Hello, everybody. Thank you for having me. 

My name is Sean. I’m the owner of Tiger Home Inspection. We’re a family-owned business that started in 1990. Our phones ran into Brancher. We cover all of Eastern Mass, Southern New Hampshire, and the whole state of Rhode Island. 

We started in my folks’ basement. My mother answered the phone. My father doing the inspection. I graduated from the University of Connecticut. My older brother graduated from Wentworth with an engineering degree. 

And here we are. We grew the company just by hard work, good referrals, and simply to be quite frank with you that we answer the phone from 8 in the morning till 10 at night, seven days a week. The person who answered the phone is no longer my mother. 

She’s 87 and retired, but she would love to be on the phone if she could. She still checks on the girls and the people who answer on the phones. Make sure that they’re doing it right, according to her. 

We’ll certainly communicate to everybody via email, text, and everything else. But we think when you purchase a home, I think a live conversation is very important, but we understand that’s not where the world is sometimes. 

But to pick up the phone and ask certain questions and be able to hear a tone of a conversation is very helpful for you, the customer, the consumer. So that’s who we are. We specialize in home inspections and home inspections only. 

We don’t perform home inspection and dabble on a little bit of roofing, a little bit of siding, a little bit of this, a little bit of that. Home inspections 24 hours a day, seven days a week. That’s all we do. 

What I think is best to do here is that once you get your team together, you found the house that you want, you put in your offer. It’s part of that offer. You have subject to have a home inspection, usually in seven to 10 days from the offer. 

It’s accepted. I’m going to try to make you somewhat of a home inspection here in the next home inspect or in the next 10 minutes. This is what you’re going to do when you go into your open houses. This is, the same thing the home inspectors do. 

When you go to the open houses, when you’re going down 969 Washington Street and Branch, you said there’s an open house there. You’re going to be a little bit more qualified because when you get to 969 Washington Street, this may seem obvious, but look across the street and look at the house next door and look at the other houses. 

You don’t need to be a home inspector to realize, geez, the house across the street, just put a new roof on. Maybe I’m going to need a new roof. This guy put a new driveway. Maybe I’m going to need a new driveway. 

These people just sided their house. It’s obvious to me. Remember, most of the times homes are built in the same timeframe within neighborhoods. Okay. So if the house across the street just did something, you may be able to do something. 

When you’re driving to that open house, think about where the house sits in the neighborhood. Does it sit at the bottom of the hill? Why? Rain, right? Everything drains downhill. Will you have water potential problem in your basement? 

Does that house, is it covered with vegetation? Has the house been lived in a long time? Did the house get away from an older couple? Is it vegetation? Is it too many trees overhanging the roof? Shorten the life expectancy of the roof. 

Is it too much vegetation against the home? So the home isn’t breathing, right? Too much vegetation can create water, welcome what? Wood boring infestation, termites, copping, and powder-pilt beetles, and of course the beloved mouse, right? 

Every house is two different houses, types of houses. Houses that have mice and those that are gonna have mice. Okay, every house has a mouse. I’m in the business, I’ve had mice. My wife has no idea how many mice I’ve taken from our basement. 

Okay, that’s a deep secret. My boys do, but she doesn’t know the big secret in the house. So yeah, yeah, I learned to pick my fights. It took me a while. So that’s what you’re gonna do. And then the day of the open house, you’re gonna walk up to the front door of the house. 

Everyone’s gonna run in the front door and they’re gonna see is that hardwood floors are throughout? Do they have new countertops? Are the cabinets painted white and is everything owl gray, right? That’s what they’re gonna want to know. 

But you’re gonna be educated because you’re gonna walk up to the house. You’re gonna step back where everybody’s running around. You’re gonna step back and you’re gonna look at everything from five feet down. 

And you’re going to look at your walkway. You’re going to look at your stairs. You’re going to look at your hand reels. You’re going to look at your driveway. You’re going to look at your vegetation. 

Then you’re going to go to the left side of the house. You’re going to do the same thing. You’re going to go to the rear of the house. You’re going to do the same thing. And you’re going to go to the other side of the house. 

And you’re going to do the same thing. Then you’re going to step back. You do not need to be a licensed home inspector since 1990 to look at a chimney to see if it’s leaning or not. That chimney’s leaning, that’s a problem. 

If the roof looks old and tired, guess what? It’s old and tired. If it has moss on it, guess what? It has moss on it. It hasn’t been getting the right proper ventilation and sunlight and drying, becoming wet and dry. 

So you’re going to do that. And then you’re going to walk into the home and everyone’s going to run to the kitchen because it’s all about the kitchens and the bathrooms. But we’re bigger than that because you’ve been here with Village Bank and listened to these experts and your team. 

You’re going to go into the basement and you’re going to get you back towards the street and you’re going to take a deep breath. And they’re going to say, what the heck is this guy doing in the basement? 

Because you’re going to go over to that boiler furnace. And if that guy’s lived in there for 30 years or 20 years or those people live there and they have that furnace of boiler serviced every year with a tag on it, guess what? 

This guy’s buttoned up. These people are buttoned up people. They’re concerned about the big ticket items. The furnace tag tells so much about the individual living there. If you have a furnace tag and you say, oh, like, you know, not too bad. 

They had it serviced in 2012, not bad. Holy smokes, it’s 2025, right? So look at the furnace. Difference between a furnace and a boiler is what? Furnace, what, heats air or boiler heats water, right? 

So just so you know, furnace, boiler, just useless information. Furnace, hot air, boiler, water. Then you’re going to look around and you’re going to take a deep breath and you’re going to say, hey, I don’t need to be a home inspector to say, why is everything up on pallets? 

This guy must love pallets. No, he has a water problem. Everything’s up on pallets because there’s a water problem. If you look around and you’re… see the washer and dryer and there’s evidence of rust on the washer and dryer down there. 

Water problem, moisture problem, sump pump. I grew up with a house with a sump pump in Braintree. I live in a house in Braintree with a sump pump. Sump pump’s a wonderful thing. Someone had a water problem or someone predicted that there’d be a water problem. 

Sump pump’s a hole that’s cut in the ground. A pump goes in there and it pumps up and out of the house. Nothing wrong with it. You just got to see if it’s working. Take a look in the sump pump. Is there water sitting in the sump pump? 

How about this? Is there a lot of spiderwebs in the sump pump? Has it been used up very often? Because it doesn’t go up and down. People aren’t concerned about it. Good problem to have. Then you’re just going to walk around the basement and you’re going to look at the plumbing. 

Listen, Home Depot, YouTube, right? Great thing. COVID, everyone turned into a plumber and they’re not. Everyone thinks they’re a plumber and they forget that stuff flows downhill and you have to have pitch. 

And so that’s the thing. You look at the plumbing and you see a lot of weeping and penetration in plumbing, then that’s… a mental note. So there you are in the basement, you’re going to get a feel for it. 

Now you’re going to have the chance when all the ants are running around the showing. It’s the White House and Lincoln Sudbury. Everybody wants this. It’s the neighborhood. Then you’re going to get into each individual room. 

You’re going to walk into each room. You’re going to be careful what you do because when you walk into a home that you’re not familiar with, everybody looks down because they don’t want to trip over the coffee table. 

Then you’re going to get back to the street. Again, back towards the street. You’re going to turn and look at all the windows and doors here. Windows and doors here. Windows and doors here. Windows and doors here. 

And because you’ve been here today, you’re going to know what it’s going to be so obvious. You are going to look up. Nobody looks up in a new home because they’re afraid of tripping or falling. You’re going to look up and see if they painted the ceilings and any cracks in the ceilings and any water damage in the ceiling. 

Then you’re going to open a closet because when someone prepares a home for sale, they paint the interior because where they won’t paint, the ceiling and the closet because they don’t care because they’re worried about the showing. 

So you’re going to open up the closet and say, are there any stains in the ceiling in your closet? And you’re going to do this in each individual room. Then you’re going to get the kitchen. The kitchen is what it is. 

You’re going to fall in love with the new white cabinets and the new countertops and everything else. That’s great. And then you’re going to go to each individual room. And that’s what you’re going to do. 

And then you’re going to say, you know what? This meets a lot of things I like. You’re going to put an offer with your very seasoned, obvious real estate agent and professional. You’re going to put in an offer. 

You’re going to call Ty the home inspection. You’re going to say, holy heck, they answered the phone at nine o’clock on a Sunday night. This is amazing because how quick does things move? Super fast. 

Super fast. We do more business on Saturday and Sunday nights than you would ever believe because it moves that fast. We’re going to book the inspection. We want you there the day of the inspection with us. 

You are our customer. We are looking out for your best interest. You will be paying me directly. We’d like to have you and one significant other and maybe one other person. We don’t want to have to hurt hands or cats, I should say. Because what happens that day, I know you will attest, and so will you, all of a sudden you’re going to have the father-in-law, the mother-in-law, and the uncle that knows everything, just ask him. 

And they’re going to say, we bought this same house in 1984, and we only paid $60,000. I can’t believe you’re paying $750,000. And so right then, they’re going to want to say, everything should be perfect, everything I say they want to show me how much they know, which is cool, I guess, right? 

And so off we go. I’m looking out for their best interest, your best interest. I’m going to do what I just told you, but you’re going to do it again. We’re going to do it a little slower. There are not any poor questions that day. 

Just like if I walked into what you do for business every day, I wouldn’t know the acronyms and some of the verbiage that you use. So if you hear something funky from the inspector, say, wait, I don’t know what that means. 

Ask them. Because they do this every day, all day. So don’t assume anything. Please ask them. We’ll go through the inspection. It’s show and tell time. We take the personal out of it. We love olive gray, and I like white cabinets. 

I got them in my own house. I got olive gray. But that day, we don’t care. It’s not a cosmetic inspection. We’re going to go through the whole inspection. Within 24 hours, you’re going to get the inspection. 

Every component in that home is either rated A, B, or C. A, it’s functioning the way it’s originally intended. B, it’s less than originally intended. Future upgrade is needed. C, it’s broken. It needs attention right now today. 

You have a leaky boiler. You have a roof at the end of it that’s like expectancy. OK, you’ll get the report, and then you’re going to sit down and you’re going to actually read the report, right? Nobody reads the report. 

And you’re going to go through the report, and you’re going to get all the B’s and C’s. And then if there’s a C that’s a glaring error, you’ll talk to your real estate agent and say, hey, the boiler was actually leaking that day. 

They hadn’t had it serviced in 25 years. Can we get an expert to look at it? Can we get it serviced? We are now on. That’s a conversation you have with her. And she’s the professional. She’s done it. 

She knows what to do next. She knows the right people to call, and that’s the decision you make. There’s only three things that are going to happen. They’re going to give you a new boiler. They’re going to take the price off the listing, or they’re going to say, too bad. 

It’s as is. It’s the hottest house in the town, right? Let’s go on to three things that are going to happen. None of them are that bad. But now you can buy it as is, knowing what as is is. The beauty of the home inspection is the seller can sell it as is, but the buyer should have the right to know what as is is. 

And if there’s an ax murderer in the attic, you should have the right to know there’s an ax murderer in the attic, and if you want to live with it or not. So that’s the deal. I’m hired by you. It’s a good time. 

It’s show and tell. I love kids. I have three kids. The whole thing, it’s not a day for small children. They’re making a huge financial investment. We don’t want you pulled in every different direction. 

I want you next to us throughout the show and tell. A few times we will step away from you, tell you to do a thing while we fill out our report. That’s basically what happens at a home inspection. So be prepared. 

There’s other additional. inspections inspections we do. Radon, which is the off gas in the uranium second leading cause of lung cancer next to the cigarette. One of the EPA says one in five homes in Massachusetts has elevated levels of radon. 

Our stats, official stats from Tiger Home Inspection. We do a lot of it’s one and four right on the number 25% of the homes that we test for radon come up elevated. The good thing and bad thing about radon. 

It can cause cancer. Good thing. It’s very easily fixed. Living in Braintree and family grew. We put a bedroom in the basement, have radon, put a system in. It costs $1200 to $1500 to put a mitigation system in, um, to remove radon. 

So having radon at home, my belief is not any reason to walk away from it. Because if you found that house in that neighborhood, you want the house across the street next time could have radon again and you can you can take care of it. 

What happened with radon, I believe is that, um, I’m older is that people didn’t have as many finished basements in the day. you have a basement and maybe you play street hockey and knee hockey with your brothers down there, football or crazy stuff, free brothers, crazy stuff going on in our basement. 

But then people made it living area, extra family rooms, right, extra bedrooms, offices. So more time spent, people spend more time living in their basement. So therefore, radon became more of a concern for in today’s housing market and the cost of housing and the expense of housing. 

Also lead paint, we will test for lead paint as well for any home built, the law says any house built prior to 1978, childhood age is six, resides in the home should be tested for lead paint. I’m not gonna get deep into lead paint, but do not buy a multifamily home without having a lead paint inspection done. 

Don’t buy a multifamily home without having lead paint certificates. A lot of people say, oh, we have the lead paint certificates. It’s in compliance with the lead law. We have the certificates. Well, here we are, a week before closing, there aren’t any certificates. 

And then we gotta go and do the lead paint inspection and if it’s built, it says anything prior to 1978, but anything 70 or older, we’re gonna find some type of lead paint, most likely. Also, it might say, oh, we have the lead paint certificates. 

Yeah, well, those lead paint certificates were done in 2005 because now lead paint, some of the lead paint become loose chipping, peeling, and flaking. That compliance led us no longer in compliance because now we have loose chipping, peeling, flaking, paint above five feet. 

So I could bore you to death with lead paint stuff, but we’re not gonna do that. Multifamily homes. Have your lead paint certificates given to you, make sure they’re updated and don’t think about buying it without a lead inspection. 

So that’s the deal. The hot topic though that’s out there now for buyers is this. There’s a brand new law and when it was attached a special amendment to Governor Healey’s $5.3 billion housing bond bill. 

And what this special amendment says is that when you make an offer, the regulations just came out last week or this week. When you make an offer there’s going to be some special additional language in there that is going to be signed by the buyer and by the seller that essentially says you as a buyer have the right to have a home inspection seller cannot deny you the right to have that home inspection because what was happening in a very difficult market buyers felt the need or whatever may be they decided that they were going to waive their home inspection contingency to make their offer more appealing and so it was putting people purchasing homes in a difficult situation. They’re paying a lot of money, over asking, elevated interest rates, buying a home they move in they can barely make the payments. They really have a budget and the first year heating system goes or a roof goes and now they have to come up with x amount of dollars to fix those things so the idea is that everybody has the right to have a home inspection if they wish you can’t be buying that right or make it perfectly clear the seller has the right to sell the property as is that the buyer has the right to know that it is Okay. And I think that’s a good thing. Think of lemon law, it’s the same idea. When you buy a used car, nobody walks into the dealership and say, I’m gonna buy a Lexus Prion 30,000 miles and say, hey, take $2,000 off the price, I’m waiving my lemon law rights. 

Original home inspection law, CMR 266, that all home inspectors are licensed under, was never meant to be a negotiation tool. It’s a consumer protection law that at some time, along the way it became a tool to break the tie. 

I like to call it, right? Say, so the listing agents is looking at all these offers, they’re all similar, but this guy’s not having a home inspection. Well, of course the seller is gonna take that offer. 

I don’t blame them, but they’re trying to level the playing field and take that off the table. So that’s good for you, the consumer. That’s my home inspection talk. I could bore you to death, but I think that’s enough. 

But thank you so much. We’ll take some questions at the end, and thank you. Very good. Thank you. 

Hi, everyone. First, I wanna say that it’s very nice to be here, and it’s nice to see faces and people who wanna buy property, because it was quiet there for a bit, and things really seemed to be picking up, which is typical for our spring market. 

I have learned a lot from all three of you already, so thank you for that. And I’m practicing law in this sphere for 27 years, and even I am learning this evening, so it’s always great to hear from fellow professionals and experts in their fields. 

So as an attorney, again, I’m practicing 27 years. I’m a partner over at Kriss Law, and what we do is practice residential real estate, and that’s representing buyers and sellers, not on the same transaction, obviously, and lenders in all aspects of real estate conveyancing. 

My specialty, specifically, is hand-holding first-time home buyers. I love to teach and I love to educate and I like to make good buyers sending them out so that they feel confident in their decision-making because as everyone has said, right, this is a huge investment. 

This is one of the biggest purchases that you will make and you’re working hard and you’re saving your money and you’re putting together a deposit. And now you’ve aligned yourself with wonderful professionals to go out there you have your pre-approval in your hand and now you’re gonna make this offer and it’s gonna get accepted. 

And then what happens next, right? What happens next is you move from the offer stage and an offer is a two or three page document. It gives you all of the figures, what your deposit’s gonna be, when your inspection’s gonna be, what your closing date is gonna be, but it is a contract, right? 

An offer to purchase when it gets accepted and is counter-signed by that seller saying that they’re gonna accept your offer, it is a binding contract. And people can sue one another over this binding contract. 

So I always tell folks, and I’m sure Darlene says the same, if it is important to you, it needs to be in that offer. You go and see this wonderful home and you love everything about it and you love that big fig tree out front. 

You have no idea that the seller was given that fig tree by their grandmother and they wanna take that fig tree with them. And we laugh and we kid around stuff like that, but we have all had experiences with the fig tree, right? 

So I always tell folks, my buyers, if it is important to you and you only want that house because that fig tree was the same fig tree that your grandmother had, then that needs to go in the offer, right? 

Because this is a binding contract. And what we can’t do is between the offer and that next phase, which is the purchase and sale agreement, is start introducing new material terms. Something that but for that term, you would not have made the offer, okay? 

So it’s really important when you’re working with a great agent, you’re gonna sit down and talk about all of those things. And those are the things that are gonna go into your contract. So you have your accepted offer and you’ve put the fig tree in it and we’re moving forward. 

And now we’re gonna work on the purchase and sale agreement. So the seller’s council is going to draft that first version of the purchase and sale agreement. That’s the way it works in Massachusetts. 

They prepare the draft and they send it over to the attorney that you’re working with. That attorney is gonna take the material terms from the offer and make sure that all of those get put into the purchase and sale agreement. 

But as we do as attorneys, we get a little wordy and we take a two page or three page offer and it becomes about a 12 or 14 page purchase and sale agreement. Much of that agreement will define what the seller has to deliver as far as the title to the property. Now the word title gets a little confusing because we all have a car, right? And the title to a car is a physical piece of paper that you get after you pay off your car if you buy your car for cash. 

That is not what a title is when it comes to real estate. The equivalent of a title is a document called the deed. And the deed is the document that conveys the property from the seller to the buyer. 

And that’s what’s delivered at closing. But the title to the property is the full history of the property, right? And statutorily in Massachusetts, when we do a title exam to make sure that the title is good and clear, it’s 50 years. 

We go back 50 years to make sure of that. So much of the purchase and sale agreement will define what the seller has to do in order to give us good title. And I always tell my clients, they don’t need to worry about the legalese of that aspect. 

That’s our job as attorneys, right? We deal with that. When you’re looking at a purchase and sale agreement, when it ultimately comes to you and when we’ve negotiated all the terms, we have you read through to make sure your names are spelled right, that the wine refrigerator or the fig tree that we thought was coming with it is included in the contract. 

You know, as attorneys we are never at the property as much, although we do sometimes do closings at the properties now, but for the most part we don’t get to see the property. So I don’t know to ask the question, well is the wine refrigerator there, is it staying? 

So that’s why we sit down with you folks and we walk through the agreement together and, you know, so that you know what you’re signing when you are, when the agreement has been fully negotiated. Once we finish the purchase and sale agreement and you’re comfortable with it and you sign off on it, then we move to the next phase of the transaction. 

And that phase is when we do as attorneys that full 50-year title examination on the property, all during which time you are working with your lender to get them in your tax returns and bank statements and all of the things that June requests, so that ultimately when we have that commitment date, which is the date in which you guys would need a nice clean mortgage commitment, okay, we know that that’s all going on at the same time and we’re doing the title exam. 

Two minutes on the mortgage commitment because even when folks don’t want to review, I’ve got plenty of clients that say, when do we trust you? We don’t need to review the whole agreement, just tell us where to sign. 

That is when I say I will insist that you read one paragraph, really two, and that’s with regard to your mortgage contingency. Our job as attorneys is to protect your deposit until closing. You guys have saved your money and you are putting down 10% or 5% when you sign that purchase and sale agreement. 

That is what we refer to as your skin in the game until closing, right? We want to make sure that if for some reason you did not get the deal, you didn’t get to the closing table, that you get that deposit back, right? 

Because if for some reason this transaction didn’t work out, there’s going to be another transaction around the corner that you’re going to to want to get involved in. So that mortgage commitment date is a date that you come up with when you put together your offer. 

And June, would you say, you know, four weeks is pretty typical, right? Four weeks on commitment. And that is the date by which your lender will issue a mortgage commitment saying we have reviewed all of the things that we needed from the buyer and we are ready to move forward with giving a full commitment that we will lend them the money, okay? 

This is super important. And that date is four weeks out. So it gives everybody plenty of time. It’s based on also on the appraisal because important to note that as a buyer, your credit needs to be approved, but also the collateral needs to be approved. 

And that’s why the appraisal is done on the property as well. So once we have that commitment in hand, we’re good to go and it’s kind of a march towards closing. Up until that commitment date, if for some reason, it’s three days before the commitment is due and forbid you lose your job. Your deposit is protected. We notify the seller that you’re gonna get a denial of financing and you get your deposit back, okay? So that date, we man that date, we diary it in seven different places, if your agent knows about it, you have it in your calendar, your lender has it in their calendar, and we’re all constantly talking because if sometimes it does happen, that additional time might be needed, 

you are waiting for a new bank statement or it’s taking a little bit longer on one of your tax returns. So we all are in constant communication with regard to that date to protect the deposit. Once that date comes and goes and you have your nice clean mortgage commitment, now we’re gonna set up a closing. 

And this is super exciting because this is when you’re gonna become a homeowner. So the closing, and I always remind folks of this, is in-person, okay? So much of this is done virtually, right? You know, you’re with your agent, but your lender typically you’re on the phone with and you’re emailing back and forth, but the closing itself is an in-person event. 

It’s about 45 minutes long. Typically it’s done at your attorney’s office, sometimes it’s done at the agent’s office, sometimes it’s done on the kitchen counter. That’s a new trend happening these days for closing in kitchens, but it doesn’t matter. 

Wherever we go, we sign a nice stack of paper, but there’s no surprises at a closing because you have locked your rate, you have gotten your final numbers, you know exactly the type of loan that you’re in because you’re working with a great lender and they’re giving you all of this information beforehand. 

For closing, there’s two ways that you can bring the remainder of your down payment and closing costs to closing, you’re either gonna get a certified check or you’re gonna arrange for a wire transfer. 

There are folks that are scared of wire transfers and I understand why we were talking about this before we all sat down together, but either way works for closing. What you can’t bring to closing is a personal check and that is because it takes time for a personal check to clear and just as much as you want your keys to your new home, the seller wants their money and they don’t want to have to wait for it. So you’ll bring that certified check to closing and you’ll have that final number beforehand. 

And your closing costs will be made up of, as June alluded to, a number of things, one of which is title insurance. So we talked about title and how we do this full 50 year title exam of the property. 

But we can only as attorneys certify title to you as it appears at the registry of deeds. The registry of deeds is this big ominous building with many, many books in it. And the one that covers this area is in Cambridge. 

Big building, big old building, lots of books. Very empty now, because most of this is done online. But we can only certify title to you as it appears in the books. So if any of those signatures in those books were signed fraudulently, you know, there was a transfer and it was… or somebody under the age of 18, a minor can’t sign a document like that, can’t find themselves. If something was misindexed at the registry, imagine thousands and thousands of books, if it was filed wrong and we don’t have the proper booking page, we can’t see any of those things with our naked eye. 

So title insurance is what would protect you if something came up with regard to those things. Title insurance is the only insurance that insures you for something that has already happened. So you get a policy on the day of your closing and it ensures you for the time before you own the property. 

It’s your responsibility to keep your title clear, moving forward, okay? Yeah, funny, huh? So title insurance, the lender requires it and every time you buy property or refinance a property, you will have to purchase a new lender’s title insurance policy. 

Owner’s insurance is for yourself. It is a one-time fee. Once you have it, you have it for the life that you own the property. Even if it becomes a rental down the road, you don’t need to get a new policy. 

It is a title policy that stays with you forever. We always highly recommend it. I’d say 99.5% of my clients purchase it. I own properties myself. I purchase it on all my properties and this is what I do for a living but I have seen it derail things. 

I have seen people crawl out of the woodwork. A property passes through in a state and one of the beneficiaries never got their 16th of a share of something from great aunt Aida and now they’re coming forward and questioning the transfer. 

The title insurance, the purpose of it is to cover the cost of anything that might come up. They will pay to fix it and to make you whole, which is what we want. So that’s my little thing on title insurance there. 

Finally, we close. You’ve signed your papers. We record the documents at the registry of deeds and once those documents have been recorded, the keys get released to the buyers and you are officially homeowners. 

It is super exciting. It can be very fast moving, but your team should be available to you. Calls at night, calls on weekends. We don’t have an off switch in this business for the most part, especially, I mean, on the legal side of things for sure, because when you’re dealing with all of these people and personalities, sellers and buyers and agents and lenders, you know, we have to make ourselves available and that’s what we do. 

And I love doing it, which you could probably tell, but I think that is everything for me. I think we’re gonna open it up to questions. Thank you so much. That was wonderful. Again, I learned a lot. Thank you. 

Do you all have questions for us? Any of the folks here? Don’t be shy. 

Can you talk about the walkway a little bit? Sure. Any specifics? Just houses, one house that’s coming up, the sales price. Yep. 

So this coming week we’re expected to see the highest inventory that we’ve seen this year. Again, just based on a couple factors, people holding their properties, people waiting for the nicer weather. 

So as far as like that inventory crunch that we’ve been feeling, it is about to break. And with this weekend probably being the biggest, the following weekend we have Mother’s Day, some people hold their properties because of that. 

So next weekend we might see a little dip, this one being a bigger one, then a little dip, and then we should be like smooth sailing from there. And as far as pricing, now that we’re starting to see inventory open up a little bit, we’ll still have a lot of the same habits from some agents where they’re going to be assuming that the market is as aggressive as it has been. 

And they’re going to just say, you know what, this is going to go over asking, this is going to go 100 over asking, this is what we’re seeing. So those people will still be out there potentially driving up the cost. 

But in reality, when we have more inventory and we spread out the demand, we’re seeing two to three offers on a property versus six or seven offers or more. So as far as what we’re expecting to see moving forward, it’s just a little bit of a break, a little bit of a release. 

And buyers are excited. My buyers are excited to get out this weekend. We’re seeing properties listing earlier, you know, Tuesday, Wednesday, instead of your typical Thursday market. Also, when we see inventory break, it motivates people, you know, they’ll see one house and they’re like, I’m not going to move my plans around just to go see one house. 

But when there’s three houses that they can go visit, they’re excited to actually, you know, go visit one house after another, compare it, maybe go out to lunch after. So it doesn’t feel like automatic defeat. 

Pricing, we’re expecting year over year to still appreciate three to five percent. depending upon the area. Some of the more expensive towns, which would be a lot of where The Village Bank services have been more stable over the past two to three years. 

So I actually just did a poll on like Sudbury, Wayland versus like Hudson and Marlboro, for example. And Hudson and Marlboro have come up like 10 to 12% over the past year. Whereas Sudbury is starting to stabilize, you know, they went up one to 2%, Wayland went up 3%. 

So that’s what we’re seeing in your kind of starter hometowns versus your, you know, top 10 school district type towns. And then as far as things that I see, so it’s nice about being a buyer agent and a listing agent is when I have my listings, I see what everybody’s doing. 

So I see, okay, people are still, you know, making up appraisal spreads. Now, I know I mentioned that earlier. An appraisal spread is when, a house, we put in an offer at $750 and then we get the appraisal done through the bank and maybe the bank says the house is actually only worth $725. 

So in a traditional market, or if there’s no appraisal contingency language, you’d actually be able to talk about that and ask the seller, hey, this appraised at $725, I wanna pay $725 now. As a way for buyers to make their offer more competitive, the varying degrees, sometimes they’ll wave appraisal language altogether and just say, whatever comes in that, I’ll pay it. 

Or they’re saying, I’ll make up a difference of 10,000. So those are things that we’re still seeing. I’m seeing fewer mortgage contingencies being waived, which is a huge relief to me. I will never advise my buyers to waive their mortgage contingency and to echo what Wendy was saying earlier, like that date is like bells and whistles. 

So we have a proprietary Salesforce database where that date is like, you wake up and it’s coming through text, it’s coming through email. And I know the same thing, it’s a very important date. So it’s nice to see that that’s starting to go by the wayside because nobody wants to risk, it’s essentially making a $50,000 gamble on yourself. 

So nice to see that. And then with inspections, right now we’re still seeing some waived inspections and I think people know the window is closing and I think that’s why it kind of upticked a little bit. 

They’re like, okay, I can use this for a short window. But if they’re not waving, they’re using creative language where they might say info only inspection, which would mean you get the same exact inspection that you would as was described by Sean, but we’re kind of making the seller think that it’s not at, you know, we’re not gonna come at them with requests. 

We’re saying, we wanna know what the as is is, like Sean explained, but we’re not gonna nickel and dime you and we’re not gonna come after you. If it’s satisfactory to us, we’ll move forward. If it isn’t, we’re gonna negate the contract. 

So the different creative language there has really helped. So I’m seeing more info only versus waived, which is nice to see. So again, and we’re just getting into a little bit more of a buyer friendly market, which of course the sellers are gonna you know have a little pity party for a little while but once we adjust they’ll understand what the new normal is and I think we’re all looking forward to seeing a more balanced market because it’s been a rough couple of years and balance is good for everybody. 

Thank you. Somebody else. Hi go ahead. 

Hi. So we talked a lot about how timeline moves quickly obviously. So I think this is kind of a two part question. One in regards to the pre-approval timeline in terms of when you make that initial conversation and start the process of pre-approval. 

Is there a time period in which that pre-approval lasts for? And then kind of the second part of that obviously in establishing your team I think we initially think you know you need a real estate agent if you have any interest in buying a house but obviously you now know that there’s more players kind of when introducing those players to the conversation, is it initially right off the bat or is it as you kind of get further in the exploratory phase? 

Well for me, when you’re talking about the pre-approval, you probably, if you’re thinking that this is something that you want to start looking at, I would suggest you get going on it, okay? Get the pre-approval. 

It lasts you 120 days, which is the time period of a credit report, okay? If for some reason you call me like the lady did today and said, mine has lapsed, I’d like to update it, okay? You can do that. 

I’ll be pulling your credit again. We may update a few documents, your pay stubs, things like that, just to make sure that we still have the current documents and then we’ll give you an updated letter that it again is going to last for 120 days. 

That should take you quite a long time, four months at a time. So the importance of that though is that you have that to give to Darlene or whomever, okay? And then you can just go and look whenever you want, whatever you find. 

And it also means that you’re not stressed when you’ve actually found something to hurry because then you’re just calling me and saying, I made the offer, it was accepted, let’s flip it. And that process works very well. 

I mean, it’s really pretty easy at that point, okay? Did you have something to say? Yeah, thank you. So just to elaborate on June statement before we talk about team, but it’s also really helpful to go through the approval process because it’ll tell you what to expect for the payments. 

So you’re looking at Zillow and Zillow is using the most attractive things to try to make you pick up the phone and call that agent. So they’re putting the lowest home insurance prices. They’re using the lowest possible rates, assuming you have like higher than 800 credit. 

So they’re making it look as attractive as possible. They’re assuming you’re putting down 20% down payment. So when you talk to June, she’s going to be able to tell you in real life, you know, you might be like, oh, I think I can afford 800. 

And in reality, you might be approved for 800, but you might have no interest in paying those mortgage payments. And so you’re like, all right, actually, I’m going to focus on 650 and under. So that conversation really primes you to know where to look. 

For me, I usually am like working the same exact time as pre-approval. Sometimes people reach out to me in advance because they just started dabbling and they want to be set up on MLS listservs and see the properties that are coming on. 

But if they reach out to me first, I’m telling them, you know what? I will do this for you, but you should talk to a lender because you’ll really know what you can afford for a house. And similarly, when you reach out to mortgage brokers first, they’re saying, you’re going to want to see properties and what you can afford. 

So why don’t you? So we’re very concurrent. And then typically once your offer is accepted, If you already don’t have a preexisting relationship with a home inspector or an attorney, then usually we’ll introduce you to them. 

However, I can’t speak highly enough about these two. I’ve worked with Wendy before, I love Kriss Law. Sean, I mean, Tiger Home Inspections is almost like when we say Kleenex or Google. So they’re like the most known in the state and do a great job. 

So traditionally we introduce after the offer is accepted, but if you happen to meet people along the way, you can tell your agent, you know what, my sister used such and such attorney. I want to use them and that’s how that would work. 

Do you guys have anything to add to that? No, you nailed it. One other thing here, when you’re talking about payments, very often when people are starting down this path, they’ll call me and they’ll say, what are the rates? 

And I brought the rates today that we’re using, but they’ll ask me what the rates are. And based upon that rate, if I’m looking for a mortgage amount of X, what would my payment be? Okay, what would it be at 15 years or a 20 year or 30 year? 

So we can go through all of those and give you those scenarios about possibilities. Then we’ll talk about the fact that that’s principle and interest. You need to be thinking about what’s your taxes and insurance going to be on top of that, okay? 

That’s a very important point. And then you can begin to feel, okay, am I comfortable with whatever this amount is? And it helps to guide you of where you’re looking in cost. Okay. Another, I mean, when I’m speaking to, because I do a lot of speaking and I have a lot of questions from typically young buyers, but first time home buyers, I don’t think it’s ever too early to speak to a lender. 

Because even if you’re not, and June, sorry, I’m gonna put you to work here for a second. But even if you’re not exactly ready, when you speak to somebody like June, she can say, you know what, you’re not there yet, but on your next raise, I think you’ll be there. 

Or you’re not there yet. You need a little bit more of a down payment. So I’m a very big fan of connecting with a lender as early on, if you’re starting to think about it, it’s a great time to make a call. 

Who else has a question? Hi, go ahead. I was wondering, you had said earlier about leaving a mortgage contingency. Can you just explain, you might’ve already said what that was. I don’t know. Go ahead. 

Sure, so one of the ways that people have been strengthening their offer, and again, all of us here are very anti-waving mortgage contingencies. But what that would mean is, so when you put your offer in and you sign that purchase and sale, you’re putting down typically 5%. 

Sometimes people will put down 10% to be a little bit more competitive. If you’re waiving your mortgage contingency, you have no recourse to those funds. So if you lose your mortgage. for any reason, you lose your job, or maybe there was a bank statement that was wrong, you relinquish that deposit fully. 

So you’re gambling on yourself. And there are some people that are like, I’m self-employed, I’m actually, I would, that’s probably the worst person, but a lot of times they’re saying, they know everything about their income, they’re a little cocky, they’re beating their chest, or it is fairly common in town jobs or pension jobs where they’re like, I’m not gonna lose my job. 

So that’s where we see it the most, but it is a terrible practice. I think all of us can’t wait until it’s over. And it’s really stressful. I mean, and also a lot of times, everyone’s looking for a fast mortgage commitment timeline. 

And so one thing that I try to do for my buyers is really draw it out. We might have a closing of June 1st, and agents will call and say, why is your mortgage commitment May 23rd? Because traditionally it’s about seven days before. 

And I say, because our closing is June 1st. And they’re like, no, no, banks can work faster than this. I wanna see a mortgage commitment date of May 10th. And June might be able to do that, but then from May 10th until June 1st, you’re essentially out of a mortgage commitment. 

You lose a job, same thing. So the bank might tell you that it’s okay and you have your commitment, but if you lose your job in that window, you lose your deposit. So that’s why those things, really we’re here as protectors of your down payment. 

There’s lots of other glorified things that we do, but the chief most important thing I think is making sure that we are protecting your deposit. Jump in for one second. Sorry, this is like my passion. 

So the thing to know about waiving, really about waiving a mortgage commitment is the day you sign that purchase and sale agreement, your deposit goes hard. That means if for any reason you cannot close on the closing date, you lose your deposit. 

So I really tell folks it, you have to have, I mean. and you have a crystal ball, I would love a peek at it. But you really have to know that there’s gonna be nothing stopping you or you’re okay losing your deposit. 

So I always tell my agents and lenders, if anybody is gonna waive their contingency, let me explain it because I kind of take all the emotion out of it. That’s the fact, right? You have to be willing to lose your deposit on day one. 

And some people can do it. But I’d say most people, and certainly most first-time home buyers, not really, not a smart move. And it’s happening less. It is. By the day. Thankfully. Anyone else? I’m really impressed by what we’ve learned here tonight. 

When you think about what you’ve got here, Sean has been telling you what to look at in that house, right? Don’t just look at the cosmetics. He’s really given you an idea. And Wendy’s given us an idea of what’s gonna happen through the attorney’s point of view. 

This lady here, boy, this is amazing. As far as I’m concerned, I’m just happy to help you with your application and getting your money for you. So we are a great team at The Village Bank. It’s a really good group. 

I can’t speak highly enough of residential lending. Everyone there is dynamite. They work really hard. They’re out there for you. We talk about the loans and how to make them work and what we can do for you. 

And we’re on the phone with you whenever you need. One of the things I say to people all the time is, if you have a question, call me back. Call me tomorrow. Fridays typically are my day when I get a lot of unusual calls. 

And I’ll say, okay, these are your options. Think this over over the weekend. Call me Monday morning. Because there’s a lot of things that they’re weighing. In this environment, they’re also weighing a lot of home equities. 

Do we wanna do work on our home? Do we wanna think about that, the home that we have? And so you have families that have homes currently and they are considering, should we move to something else? Should we work on our house as it is? 

Do we wanna do mass save and put in a new heating system? These kinds of things we get questions on all the time. Don’t feel at all that you should call and ask. I brought some cards. Call me when you want, after Disney. 

What? Did you share today’s rates? Oh yes, today’s rates. Okay, so we do 10, 15, 20 and 30 year loans, fixed loans. Your rate is fixed like a car loan. So you know every month it’s gonna be the same. 

We also have ARMS, 5, 1, 7, 1, 10, 1. If you’re not familiar with that, concept, it’s an adjustable rate mortgage. The first number there is how long it’s locked. The second number is how often it can change after that first period of time. 

The third number is not usually said, it’s typically 30 years, so it’d be a 5-1-30, so it’s amortized over 30 years. But those are important figures because you’re gonna find that that 5-1 arm usually has a low rate because what they’re saying is, in five years, rates may go up, may go down, I can refinance, okay? 

Some rates for you, sure. The 5-1 arm today, 6.5, the APR is 7.026. A 30 year fixed, 6.875, APR is 7.107. One thing, when you’re shopping, they should always give you the APR, why? We usually go by the simple, but the APR, no matter how they’re figuring their rates, they have to figure the APR the way. So apples to apples, when you go from one bank to another, ask what the APR is, okay? Anything else? Any other questions? I’m so glad you came. And Amy has brought us lots of goodies in the back. 

I want to thank everyone for coming tonight. Our panel will be sitting around for a few more minutes if you wanted to ask them a specific question. We do have treats in the back. I want to bring Stephanie back up because we do, we are going to award someone $150 gift certificate to Tarpufo in Newton Center. 

This is what you really came for, right? So they pulled a ticket back there, I’m assuming. I’m going to hand it to the magic envelope here, and it’s Shane and Leslie. Oh! Very good. Thank you so much. 

Come up and talk if you want to. We’re glad you came. 

Hi, everyone. First, I wanna say that it’s very nice to be here, and it’s nice to see faces and people who wanna buy property, because it was quiet there for a bit, and things really seemed to be picking up, which is typical for our spring market. 

I have learned a lot from all three of you already, so thank you for that. And I’m practicing law in this sphere for 27 years, and even I am learning this evening, so it’s always great to hear from fellow professionals and experts in their fields. 

So as an attorney, again, I’m practicing 27 years. I’m a partner over at Kriss Law, and what we do is practice residential real estate, and that’s representing buyers and sellers, not on the same transaction, obviously, and lenders in all aspects of real estate conveyancing. 

My specialty, specifically, is hand-holding first-time home buyers. I love to teach and I love to educate and I like to make good buyers sending them out so that they feel confident in their decision-making because as everyone has said, right, this is a huge investment. 

This is one of the biggest purchases that you will make and you’re working hard and you’re saving your money and you’re putting together a deposit. And now you’ve aligned yourself with wonderful professionals to go out there you have your pre-approval in your hand and now you’re gonna make this offer and it’s gonna get accepted. 

And then what happens next, right? What happens next is you move from the offer stage and an offer is a two or three page document. It gives you all of the figures, what your deposit’s gonna be, when your inspection’s gonna be, what your closing date is gonna be, but it is a contract, right? 

An offer to purchase when it gets accepted and is counter-signed by that seller saying that they’re gonna accept your offer, it is a binding contract. And people can sue one another over this binding contract. 

So I always tell folks, and I’m sure Darlene says the same, if it is important to you, it needs to be in that offer. You go and see this wonderful home and you love everything about it and you love that big fig tree out front. 

You have no idea that the seller was given that fig tree by their grandmother and they wanna take that fig tree with them. And we laugh and we kid around stuff like that, but we have all had experiences with the fig tree, right? 

So I always tell folks, my buyers, if it is important to you and you only want that house because that fig tree was the same fig tree that your grandmother had, then that needs to go in the offer, right? 

Because this is a binding contract. And what we can’t do is between the offer and that next phase, which is the purchase and sale agreement, is start introducing new material terms. Something that but for that term, you would not have made the offer, okay? 

So it’s really important when you’re working with a great agent, you’re gonna sit down and talk about all of those things. And those are the things that are gonna go into your contract. So you have your accepted offer and you’ve put the fig tree in it and we’re moving forward. 

And now we’re gonna work on the purchase and sale agreement. So the seller’s council is going to draft that first version of the purchase and sale agreement. That’s the way it works in Massachusetts. 

They prepare the draft and they send it over to the attorney that you’re working with. That attorney is gonna take the material terms from the offer and make sure that all of those get put into the purchase and sale agreement. 

But as we do as attorneys, we get a little wordy and we take a two page or three page offer and it becomes about a 12 or 14 page purchase and sale agreement. Much of that agreement will define what the seller has to deliver as far as the title to the property. Now the word title gets a little confusing because we all have a car, right? And the title to a car is a physical piece of paper that you get after you pay off your car if you buy your car for cash. 

That is not what a title is when it comes to real estate. The equivalent of a title is a document called the deed. And the deed is the document that conveys the property from the seller to the buyer. 

And that’s what’s delivered at closing. But the title to the property is the full history of the property, right? And statutorily in Massachusetts, when we do a title exam to make sure that the title is good and clear, it’s 50 years. 

We go back 50 years to make sure of that. So much of the purchase and sale agreement will define what the seller has to do in order to give us good title. And I always tell my clients, they don’t need to worry about the legalese of that aspect. 

That’s our job as attorneys, right? We deal with that. When you’re looking at a purchase and sale agreement, when it ultimately comes to you and when we’ve negotiated all the terms, we have you read through to make sure your names are spelled right, that the wine refrigerator or the fig tree that we thought was coming with it is included in the contract. 

You know, as attorneys we are never at the property as much, although we do sometimes do closings at the properties now, but for the most part we don’t get to see the property. So I don’t know to ask the question, well is the wine refrigerator there, is it staying? 

So that’s why we sit down with you folks and we walk through the agreement together and, you know, so that you know what you’re signing when you are, when the agreement has been fully negotiated. Once we finish the purchase and sale agreement and you’re comfortable with it and you sign off on it, then we move to the next phase of the transaction. 

And that phase is when we do as attorneys that full 50-year title examination on the property, all during which time you are working with your lender to get them in your tax returns and bank statements and all of the things that June requests, so that ultimately when we have that commitment date, which is the date in which you guys would need a nice clean mortgage commitment, okay, we know that that’s all going on at the same time and we’re doing the title exam. 

Two minutes on the mortgage commitment because even when folks don’t want to review, I’ve got plenty of clients that say, when do we trust you? We don’t need to review the whole agreement, just tell us where to sign. 

That is when I say I will insist that you read one paragraph, really two, and that’s with regard to your mortgage contingency. Our job as attorneys is to protect your deposit until closing. You guys have saved your money and you are putting down 10% or 5% when you sign that purchase and sale agreement. 

That is what we refer to as your skin in the game until closing, right? We want to make sure that if for some reason you did not get the deal, you didn’t get to the closing table, that you get that deposit back, right? 

Because if for some reason this transaction didn’t work out, there’s going to be another transaction around the corner that you’re going to to want to get involved in. So that mortgage commitment date is a date that you come up with when you put together your offer. 

And June, would you say, you know, four weeks is pretty typical, right? Four weeks on commitment. And that is the date by which your lender will issue a mortgage commitment saying we have reviewed all of the things that we needed from the buyer and we are ready to move forward with giving a full commitment that we will lend them the money, okay? 

This is super important. And that date is four weeks out. So it gives everybody plenty of time. It’s based on also on the appraisal because important to note that as a buyer, your credit needs to be approved, but also the collateral needs to be approved. 

And that’s why the appraisal is done on the property as well. So once we have that commitment in hand, we’re good to go and it’s kind of a march towards closing. Up until that commitment date, if for some reason, it’s three days before the commitment is due and forbid you lose your job. Your deposit is protected. We notify the seller that you’re gonna get a denial of financing and you get your deposit back, okay? So that date, we man that date, we diary it in seven different places, if your agent knows about it, you have it in your calendar, your lender has it in their calendar, and we’re all constantly talking because if sometimes it does happen, that additional time might be needed, 

you are waiting for a new bank statement or it’s taking a little bit longer on one of your tax returns. So we all are in constant communication with regard to that date to protect the deposit. Once that date comes and goes and you have your nice clean mortgage commitment, now we’re gonna set up a closing. 

And this is super exciting because this is when you’re gonna become a homeowner. So the closing, and I always remind folks of this, is in-person, okay? So much of this is done virtually, right? You know, you’re with your agent, but your lender typically you’re on the phone with and you’re emailing back and forth, but the closing itself is an in-person event. 

It’s about 45 minutes long. Typically it’s done at your attorney’s office, sometimes it’s done at the agent’s office, sometimes it’s done on the kitchen counter. That’s a new trend happening these days for closing in kitchens, but it doesn’t matter. 

Wherever we go, we sign a nice stack of paper, but there’s no surprises at a closing because you have locked your rate, you have gotten your final numbers, you know exactly the type of loan that you’re in because you’re working with a great lender and they’re giving you all of this information beforehand. 

For closing, there’s two ways that you can bring the remainder of your down payment and closing costs to closing, you’re either gonna get a certified check or you’re gonna arrange for a wire transfer. 

There are folks that are scared of wire transfers and I understand why we were talking about this before we all sat down together, but either way works for closing. What you can’t bring to closing is a personal check and that is because it takes time for a personal check to clear and just as much as you want your keys to your new home, the seller wants their money and they don’t want to have to wait for it. So you’ll bring that certified check to closing and you’ll have that final number beforehand. 

And your closing costs will be made up of, as June alluded to, a number of things, one of which is title insurance. So we talked about title and how we do this full 50 year title exam of the property. 

But we can only as attorneys certify title to you as it appears at the registry of deeds. The registry of deeds is this big ominous building with many, many books in it. And the one that covers this area is in Cambridge. 

Big building, big old building, lots of books. Very empty now, because most of this is done online. But we can only certify title to you as it appears in the books. So if any of those signatures in those books were signed fraudulently, you know, there was a transfer and it was… or somebody under the age of 18, a minor can’t sign a document like that, can’t find themselves. If something was misindexed at the registry, imagine thousands and thousands of books, if it was filed wrong and we don’t have the proper booking page, we can’t see any of those things with our naked eye. 

So title insurance is what would protect you if something came up with regard to those things. Title insurance is the only insurance that insures you for something that has already happened. So you get a policy on the day of your closing and it ensures you for the time before you own the property. 

It’s your responsibility to keep your title clear, moving forward, okay? Yeah, funny, huh? So title insurance, the lender requires it and every time you buy property or refinance a property, you will have to purchase a new lender’s title insurance policy. 

Owner’s insurance is for yourself. It is a one-time fee. Once you have it, you have it for the life that you own the property. Even if it becomes a rental down the road, you don’t need to get a new policy. 

It is a title policy that stays with you forever. We always highly recommend it. I’d say 99.5% of my clients purchase it. I own properties myself. I purchase it on all my properties and this is what I do for a living but I have seen it derail things. 

I have seen people crawl out of the woodwork. A property passes through in a state and one of the beneficiaries never got their 16th of a share of something from great aunt Aida and now they’re coming forward and questioning the transfer. 

The title insurance, the purpose of it is to cover the cost of anything that might come up. They will pay to fix it and to make you whole, which is what we want. So that’s my little thing on title insurance there. 

Finally, we close. You’ve signed your papers. We record the documents at the registry of deeds and once those documents have been recorded, the keys get released to the buyers and you are officially homeowners. 

It is super exciting. It can be very fast moving, but your team should be available to you. Calls at night, calls on weekends. We don’t have an off switch in this business for the most part, especially, I mean, on the legal side of things for sure, because when you’re dealing with all of these people and personalities, sellers and buyers and agents and lenders, you know, we have to make ourselves available and that’s what we do. 

And I love doing it, which you could probably tell, but I think that is everything for me. I think we’re gonna open it up to questions. Thank you so much. That was wonderful. Again, I learned a lot. Thank you.

Okay. All right. So, as mentioned, my name is Darlene Umina. And I am the team lead of Darlene & Company at LaMacchia Realty. 

You can go to the next slide. So just to give you an idea of some of my background, I’m associated with Zillow as the best of Zillow, top 1.5% of the country nationwide through real trends of all agents nationally. 

Boston Magazine, top producer. I have a Bachelor’s in Science from Providence College if I have any PC people in the house. As far as track record, over 250 million sold and over 400 units, close to 450, licensed since 07. 

So that just gives you a background on what you’re hearing today is based on experience and track record and knowing exactly what’s going on in the market today. All right, so congratulations, first and foremost. 

You guys are here to start the process of home buying. Is everybody a first-time home buyer or do we have any second time or great? So one of the best things that you can do is to start to dream about where you want to be. 

And this is what I kind of advise all of my buyers. Set some time aside with you and any other decision makers. Sometimes we have parents involved in the process or sometimes it’s siblings buying a home together. 

Whoever is going to be a decision maker, sit down, maybe, you know, make it fun, have dinner, a couple of cocktails, set up a breakfast or a brunch and write down all the important stuff that you want in your home. 

Whether that’s, you know, three beds, two baths, a picket fence, do you want a condo, do you want to be in the city, do you want to be walkable? Like really think about all those things and get excited about where you want to be. 

And then you can go to the next one. Perfect, so what you want to do is think about what life is going to look like for the next three to five years. Are you planning on having children? Are you maybe paying off doctor loans for the next five years and your income is going to be freed up beyond that? 

You want to look at it. At what you’ll need for the next three to five years. So what are the needs and what are the nice to haves? And again, write those down. Also things to consider, schools, again, walkability, shopping, I have some clients tell me like they need to be really close to a golf course. 

So up here in New England, it’s a little different than the communities that you hear about down South, they’re on golf courses, but whatever’s important to you. And make those ideas concrete, because it’ll really help you to stay focused when the market is asking you to drift. 

So it’ll be absolutely a temptation at 1 a.m. when you’re on Zillow and you’re not seeing any homes in your exact preferred location. And you’re like, well, let me see what’s available over here and let me see what’s available over here. 

Certainly it’s fun to play. I am guilty of the same things when I am buying for my own family. But again, having those ideas set down concrete will just lead you back so that you know you’re not compromising anything. 

Now also is the time to visit the different towns. You know, you might have your eyes, your sights set on Lexington, and, but you don’t know much about it. And you’re maybe a little hesitant to go to open houses because you’re not quite ready. 

Well, go and spend some time in the towns, go to the farmer’s markets, go to the playgrounds. I also advise people to go to the grocery stores. Like, does it feel like this could be home for you? Whether or not there’s a house for you to go visit right now. 

You can go to the next one. All right, so now it’s time to shop. So we’re going to do house hunting one-to-one. And one thing just to keep in mind, we are in a low inventory market. I’m assuming with the news being the way it is that everyone has heard that in one capacity or another, you know, low inventory, low inventory. 

So in a low inventory market, I ask my clients to keep an open mind. Sometimes we have like the right kind of wrong. And, you know, what that means is maybe you wanted four bedrooms, but we find a three bedroom and an office. 

And you’re like, you know what, this will work. And you’re going to feel that right kind of wrong as soon as you feel it and be like, this is it, this is okay. So in a low inventory market, try to keep an open mind. 

Sometimes it’s, I don’t want to be on a busy street or on a double yellow. And we go see a double yellow and you’re like, well, it is on a double yellow, but it is a quiet street. So that’s just some examples of, again, making sure that you’re keeping an open mind and kind of feeling the right kind of wrong. 

Now, to be successful when hunting for homes, we want to make sure that you’re fully available to see houses. So oftentimes with, you know, the people that I’m working with, they will, they’re just so busy and, which is a glorious thing, but they’ll be like, I really love this house, but I’m going to South Carolina for a bachelorette party. 

I really love this house, but I’m, you know, I decided to pick up some extra shifts at work, which is of course great for the bottom line and building your down payment. But when it’s time, you want to be fully available to see them, especially on the weekend. So just keep that in mind because we’re in a very tight market as far as timeline. And you guys probably see this even from whatever platforms you’re following, but typically homes list on a Thursday and they’re off the market by Monday or Tuesday. 

And I know that sounds scary, so don’t let that scare you, but the time to see them is the weekend. We don’t always have time during the week. So be available. If you love a house online, make sure you’re telling your agent as soon as possible. 

And that’s only because sometimes the house won’t necessarily be available until the open house. They might start showings on Friday. The open house is Sunday and you show up and you’re so excited and you bring your parents and you took the shift off from work and the house has gone and the open house is canceled. 

So you wanna make sure you’re keeping an open line of communication with your agent so that you know the house is fully available. And most importantly that you can get in earlier if it’s something that you truly love. 

With all of these different platforms, so Zillow, Redfin, Realtor.com. They’re trying to get you to call so they can sell their leads. So you might see, oh, this house is available right now. 4 p.m. I can go look. 

Oh, goodie. Let me tell my agent I’m ready. That might not be true. So one thing that we say is just, you know, similarly, just like a house might not last until the open house, they also might be telling you we can’t see it until Saturday. 

They’re telling you that it’s true. Trust them. You want to pay attention to offer deadlines. So a good agent is going to try their hardest to get you an offer accepted prior to the deadline just because it cuts out competition. 

So make sure you’re paying attention to those deadlines, paying attention to market inventory, the best off-market inventory, I’m sorry. The best deals don’t hit the market. I’m sure you guys have heard a lot about this off-market and maybe you’re like, how do I access that? 

What are these people talking about? It’s one thing that definitely is sensationalized by agents to make everybody look like they have something that the next agent doesn’t have. And while that is true to a certain point, it’s not like it’s a plentiful situation. 

Don’t worry that you’re missing out on too much. But if you have the opportunity to see something before it hits the market, definitely go. You’re going to be cutting out the competition. Don’t be afraid of higher days on market. 

So what’s days on market? You’re listed, you know, say May 1st and it’s now May 28th and there’s 28 days on market. So most buyers will see that and be like, oh, there’s something wrong with the house. 

And the reality is most of the time, the only thing that’s wrong with the house is the price. These sellers were reaching a little bit. They were looking at, you know, maybe when inventory was a little bit lower and their neighbor got a higher price. 

So just know that there might not be anything wrong with house and that if you hop on that, you’re usually going to get a better deal. So those are just some things to keep in mind for getting ready to search. 

Now, what to look for? So the vibe is right. You like the flow of the home, the size of the home, the location of the home. So now we have to focus on the bones and making sure that it’s truly a good home. 

And so this is a showing checklist that I provide my buyers with, that we try to go over at the house to make sure that we’re checking all the right things before you put an offer in. So you can see some of those items there, but you know, agent condition of roof, the water heater, were their permits pulled when work was done, evidence of leaking or mold. 

So once we go through all those items, again, the vibe is right, you like the home, you like the neighborhood, now we know the bones are good, now it’s time to write an offer. And remember that it’s also time to trust your agent to steer you in the right direction, you did hire them for a reason. 

But first and foremost, you wanna check the current market conditions. So depending upon how aggressive you wanna be about searching, it could be months or weeks in between when you’ve written your last offer. 

And during that time in a market like today, there are many things that can change. So you wanna, you know, again, check in with them, make sure they have their pulse on the market, they might be listing a buyer’s agent, which is good because it gives both perspectives. They see what’s coming across their desk for the listings and they also have their pulse in the market for buyers. But as an example, three weeks ago, there were talk of tariffs and that actually led to homes that typically would be getting multiple offers, five, six offers, getting no offers. 

And the interesting thing about that was the rates were down and yet buyer confidence went with it. So a lot of these homes that had brought in multiple offers actually brought in no offers. And then if you fast forward to today, if you were gonna go out and shop for homes this weekend, what you’d see is the highest inventory that we’ve had so far this year. 

And that’s based on a few factors. We’re in New England, people that are listing, they really want their houses to look nice, they want their grass to be green, they want their flowers out. So that’s one reason to hold inventory. 

But also last weekend and the weekend before that were school vacation bookend weekends. So either they weren’t home, a lot of sellers you’d think that that would work out. They’re not home, it’s easy to show their house, but they like to be around, they like to make sure everything’s secure. 

And they wanna make sure if they’re being advised by a good agent that they’re getting the most demand. So a lot of sellers were holding their homes. So that’s why this weekend, we’re actually gonna see quite a bump in inventory. 

It’s making conditions for buyers quite good. The next 60 to 90 days are gonna be the biggest sort of boom for real estate. Cause again, the inventory will keep going up. The buyers are the most motivated in the spring. 

A lot of people are trying to get in before the school system, before school. So you’ll close July 1st and your kids will be ready for school. But what we’re seeing with this busy market is a lot of waived contingencies. 

So June asked me to be honest about what we’re seeing in the marketplace. And it’s a mix of things depending upon people’s price points. But things that I’m seeing from my listings that come across my desk, waived inspections, which Sean will talk about thankfully is hopefully going by the wayside very soon. 

And we’re all very excited about that. some creative mortgage language, and also some appraisal language, people coming up with potentially making up the difference for appraisal spreads, tightening up timelines. 

So those are some things that I’m seeing today. And then lastly, where I see most agents making mistakes, and this is why you wanna make sure that you’re doing your due diligence and interviewing them appropriately, is that they’re advising buyers to be more aggressive than they need to be. 

So they’re hearing these things, they’re hearing the sensationalism in their own offices or on the news or whoever they follow on social media. And instead of paying attention to, ooh, inventory went up and having very important conversations with the listing agent, they’re again, advising their buyers to do things that they don’t have to do, whether it’s waving an inspection, being more aggressive with price. 

So for myself, I have two recent examples. I had a home I had listed in Sudbury, and we had no offers on the table. The buyer came out the gate with their agent, 25,000 above asking and waived everything, waived the inspection, waived their mortgage contingency. 

Now, there’s no competition and there was no competition coming in. And if she asked the right questions, she would have been able to give a much more, first of all, a better deal for her buyers, but also a less stressful transaction. 

Similarly, I had another home listed two weeks ago where a buyer ended up paying 100,000 over asking, again, not necessary. So you wanna make sure that you’re hiring the right agent to ask the right questions, to make sure that they’re not making poor decisions on your behalf. 

And then when you are ready to write the offer, it’s the seller’s typically in the driver’s seat, even in a low inventory market. Your agent’s gonna pull comps for the neighborhood and make sure they can substantiate pricing and come to you with the information to be the most aggressive to get you the house. 

If you’re not comfortable, you tell them, I’m not comfortable with this, it’s a little too aggressive for me. And that’s totally fine. It should be all about you and your comfort level. Sorry, I’m getting long winded. 

I’m gonna almost wrap up. The next slide is just a sample buyer timeline to kind of give you that 10,000 foot view. Typically this is about a six week scenario. So obviously it takes as long as it takes to find the home. 

But once you find the home, you do the offer to purchase, your initial deposit, which is usually, I’m seeing between one and 5,000, inspection timeline, and you’ll hire a wonderful home inspector like Sean here. 

And then you go through the purchase and sale with Wendy. And in the meantime, your home mortgage process is running in the background, including your appraisal. And this all wraps up in about six weeks. 

And then my last slide is just being ready to strike. So now that you have, again, this 10,000 foot view, here are some takeaways to be ready. So you want your rock solid pre-approval, which June is gonna talk about with you. 

You wanna understand what your payments look like so that you can make quick decisions during negotiations, like always know what happened with the rates. You might, you know, if you check in before the weekend, you might be like, oh, wow, I have another hundred thousand in spend. 

Or similarly, you might be like, oh, Oh, geez, my spend went down because the rates went up a little bit. So just make sure you know about rates. Know your exact liquid funds available so that you can be comfortably, we can advise you on what to offer for your deposits. 

And if parents are playing a part, for example, making sure that you know what your parents are willing to give you. And then lastly, as we discussed, keep your pulse on what the agent’s telling you that they’re seeing in the marketplace because they’re the ones that truly know. 

It’s not the news, it’s not your parents. Make sure you’re talking to your agent about what they’re seeing. That’s it. Very interesting, thank you, thank you.