How Can You Buy Your Dream Home in Maine?

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation

When there aren't many homes for sale on the market and you're trying to buy one, things can get a little tough. However, that doesn't mean it's impossible to buy a good home. As a buyer, there are many different ways to strengthen your offer to get the home that you desire.

One thing that you can do as a buyer in a seller's market is to become pre-approved with a local lender. This will make your offer comparable to a cash offer in the eyes of a seller, and it also allows you to figure out how much you can comfortably spend on a home.

Don't forget to put a good portion of money down on a home. You don't need the traditional 20% down, but if you can afford to pay that upfront, I suggest you do so. The more you can put down, the better your offer will look to the seller.

Get yourself organized, and know where your bank statements are, your W-2 forms, and any other piece of information that you're going to need in order to buy a home. Sellers want to see someone that's ready, willing, and able to buy a home. Being organized is one way to show that you're a serious buyer.

Don't make a lowball offer, especially in a bidding war! You need to come in hot with your best offer. You may be ignored by the seller if your offer is too low, or you may run the risk of offending the seller with a low offer.

Keeping your contingencies reasonable is another way to capture the eyes of sellers. They want to find the buyer that will make selling their home easy, and they don't want to negotiate around contingencies with a buyer. The less contingent your offer is, the more attractive sellers will find it.

Those are my top five tips to help you buy in Southern Maine when the market heats up. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to me!

With Zillow, You Have a 7% Chance of Success

Buying a home? Click here to perform a full home search
Selling a home? Click here for a FREE Home Price Evaluation

As a real estate professional, I'm continually bombarded by the question, "Why does Zillow price my home in Southern Maine differently?"

If we go on Zillow's website, this is how they explain it: The Zestimate is created by an automatic software process designed by statisticians, and there is no ability for humans to manually alter the Zestimate for a specific property.

To make that more clear, let's say a home is estimated to be worth $500,000. If the Zestimate is off by 10%, that's a difference of $50,000! If the home is under-priced, you're missing out on tens of thousands of dollars. If your home is overpriced by 10%, it will sit on the market for awhile, and you might have to drop the price, causing buyers to wonder what's wrong with the home.

Remember, Zillow can't take features or upgrades on your property and compare them to other recently closed homes in your area, even though doing so gives you a more updated value on your property. Zillow doesn't walk through your home, and that's where my team can come in and place an accurate value on your home.

Ultimately, if you want the most accurate price for your home, make an appointment with a real estate professional. We will go over your home and the local market data in order to give you the most accurate home value.

If you have any questions, or if you're interested in a home valuation, give us a call or send us an email. We look forward to hearing from you!