How To Buy An Eagle Idaho Home In 3 Days

Buy Your Eagle Idaho Home In 3 Days!

Eagle Idaho Home

Given the expense of multiple home-buying trips, many of my Eagle Idaho home buyers are eager to avoid making several costly  trips to view homes.

Because I do my “homework” before they arrive, many of my buyers purchase a home within a day or two of their arrival.

As you might expect, those buyers work closely with me to identify their needs, wants, likes, and dislikes so we can select suitable homes before they arrive.

I often spend two weeks (or more) researching MLS listings and previewing homes before my buyers come to view homes.

Here’s how I can help you buy an Eagle Idaho home in 3 days.

Let Me Research Eagle Idaho Listings

I realize that, no matter what I say, you’re going to look at homes online.

You’ll drool over the eye candy and be tempted to request more information from “preferred agents” on those sites.

When you request additional information (that was conveniently omitted to get you to respond) from one of those agents, you become a “lead” and can expect to receive daily phone calls and drip list e-mails.

Those websites aren’t real estate sites, they’re lead generation sites whose business model is to sell leads (like you) to real estate agents and lenders.

Understand that much of what you see on those sites is misleading or inaccurate; often with photos of other homes and homes that are already in escrow.

It’s much easier to let me research suitable properties while applying my 47 years’ experience and market knowledge to eliminate the vast majority of available listings.

My deep broker-level MLS search tools, combined with other resources, allow me to see information that isn’t displayed to the public.

Commit To Work Together

Signing a Buyer Representation Agreement will assure you of my diligent efforts to find the right home for you.

It will also confirm our agency relationship and require me to look after your best interests.

Without a signed Buyer Representation Agreement, you are a “customer” and not a “client”.

My exceptional services and advice are available to those who are willing to become clients.

I work with no more than four clients at a time to ensure a high level of personal service to my clients.

Work In Partnership

We will need to discuss your needs, wants, likes, and dislikes in detail as the first step in your home search.

That means building a trust relationship with open, honest two-way communication if we are to succeed.

I can’t help you if I don’t clearly understand what you want to accomplish.

Arrange Pre-Approved Financing

If you will be financing your Eagle Idaho home, you will need to secure pre-approved financing.

Few sellers will seriously consider an offer if you lack pre-approved financing.

You should work with a local, direct lender (I have one!) and secure pre-approved financing before you look at homes.

You will need fully-underwritten financing; not a weak pre-qualification letter based only upon a phone call to a lender.

Identify Homes of Interest

Narrow your list of potential homes to the ones you think are the best choices.

You won’t have time to waste “shopping around” and doing drive-bys.

We will need to focus closely on homes that best match your criteria.

I Will Preview Eagle ID Homes

I will NOT show you homes that I haven’t already seen myself.

Instead, I will preview homes that appear to meet your criteria and eliminate most of them while telling you what’s wrong with them.

My colleagues sometimes view my approach as being “negative”.

I view it as providing full disclosure and helping my buyers make informed decisions.

View The Best Eagle ID Homes

By now, you should have narrowed your list to a few homes that match your criteria.

I will help you eliminate obvious misfits.

It’s pointless to waste your valuable time looking at homes that aren’t what you want.

Select The Best Eagle Idaho Home

At this point, we should have a clear choice of a few homes that meet your criteria.

Together, we will focus on those homes and decide which home is your #1 choice.

Structure An Acceptable Offer

We have a hot Eagle Idaho real estate market.

It’s pointless to make a lowball offer, a contingent offer, or an offer with a long escrow.

Your objective is to secure an accepted, reasonable, fair offer.

Don’t let stubborn pride get in the way of reaching agreement with the seller.

Summary

Buying a home in 3 days isn’t easy.

It requires mutual trust, good communication, diligence, and considerable effort by both of us.

More often than not, I’m able to find the best home for my buyers by following the steps listed above.

With our low listing inventory, don’t be surprised if we have only a few homes to consider after I complete my due diligence.

Need to buy an Eagle Idaho home in 3 days?

I can help you make it happen!

Call me at (208)938-5533 or e-mail me and let’s talk!

Eagle, Idaho Community Information

Tour of Eagle Video

Eagle Country Lifestyle Video

Boise River Greenbelt Video

Snake River Valley Wine Region Video

Boise Idaho Fall Color Video

Eagle Idaho New Homes vs. Resale Homes

The trade-offs between Eagle Idaho new homes and resale homes.

Eagle Idaho New Homes

Here are some things to consider with Eagle Idaho new homes vs. resale homes.

Eagle Idaho New Homes

  • Many new home developments offer a community pool and extensive common areas with walking paths.
  • Most new homes will have slab granite or quartz countertops in the kitchen and bathrooms.
  • New homes often include KitchenAid, Bosch, Maytag, or Thermidor stainless steel appliances
  • Most new homes will have areas with gleaming hardwood flooring.
  • New homes will have insulated floors, 2×6 framing, more insulation, higher quality roofs, and more energy-efficient HVAC systems.
  • Eagle Idaho new homes are more energy-efficient with significantly lower utility costs.
  • Most Eagle Idaho new homes come with a one-year builder’s warranty.
  • Buyers can usually avoid multiple offer bidding wars when buying a new home (especially when the home is under construction).

Eagle Idaho Resale Homes

  • Most resale homes will lack the latest modern amenities.
  • It’s common for many resale homes to have laminate, or 4” tile, countertops in both kitchens and bathrooms.
  • It’s also common to see linoleum floors in the kitchen, laundry room, and bathrooms of older resale homes.
  • If you buy a resale home, you won’t have a home warranty unless you purchase one from a third-party warranty company.
  • Homes built before 2004 were not required to have insulated floors.
  • Many resale homes (especially older ones) were built with 2×4 framing and less insulation.
  • Most older homes were built with less efficient (often 80%) HVAC systems.
  • Resale homes will usually have higher utility costs.
  • With age, many major components (paint, roof, HVAC, appliances, carpet, windows, etc.) will need to be replaced sooner than a new home.
  • Neighboring homes may not be well-maintained.
  • Some resale homes will be in subdivisions with numerous nearby rental homes.
  • Resale homes may offer more mature landscaping than a new home.
  • Resale home buyers may face multiple offer bidding wars with some resale home listings.

Eagle, Idaho Community Information

Tour of Eagle Video

Eagle Country Lifestyle Video

Boise River Greenbelt Video

Snake River Valley Wine Region Video

Boise Idaho Fall Color Video

Why Searching For Eagle Idaho Homes Online Is Futile

Are you searching for Eagle Idaho Homes online?

Eagle Idaho Homes

If so, you may be getting frustrated.

There are several reasons for that frustration, including the following.

Eagle Idaho Homes: Lack of Context

Plainly stated, if you haven’t been here, you don’t understand our area, our climate, our surroundings, our developments, our builders, our real estate practices, our traffic, our shopping, our churches, our schools, and . . . . . .

The list goes on and on.

If you haven’t been here, you lack the context that’s needed to evaluate what they’re seeing online.

There’s no substitute for coming to our area for a visit so you can understand all of the above before you try to figure out where you want to live and what you want to buy.

If you’ve visited, you will still lack the thorough knowledge and context that’s needed to correlate what you see online vs. actual neighborhoods and homes.

It’s impossible to form valid conclusions about Eagle Idaho homes without seeing and understanding what you’re considering.

Eagle Idaho Homes: Misleading Online Information

Yeah, I know ~ you saw it on the internet.

Therefore, it must be true, right?

The truth is that much of what’s displayed on the real estate portals is misleading or just plain false information.

I’ve seen listings on real estate sites with photos of the wrong home, listings of homes with accepted offers, and listings of homes that were sold several years earlier.

The online real estate portals are not real estate sites.

They are lead-generation sites.

Their business model is to generate leads that are then sold to real estate agents and lenders.

When you request more information (register with an online form), your contact information, browsing history, and other information you provide gets sold to real estate agents who rely upon those leads to generate their sales.

Your personal information becomes data and you become the product instead of the consumer.

I know of agents in the Boise Area real estate market, with large teams of inexperienced junior agents, who are spending $20,000/month (or more) while buying “leads” for their agents.

When you become one of those leads, plan on being added to a daily e-mail drip list that may be difficult to escape from.

You can also expect to receive daily calls from those agents to excitedly tell you about new listings.

I recently spoke with one such agent who told me she was required to make 50 such calls a day in order to remain on a team.

Worse yet, your contact information will likely be sold to a long list of mortgage lenders who will also pester you.

One of my past clients told they me they received 21 phone calls within the first 30 minutes after requesting more information about a listing he saw online.

Eagle Idaho Homes: Photos Similar

Some online listings display photos of homes that are not the homes described in the listings.

Those listings include photos of similar homes; not the home displayed in the listing.

This is almost always the case for photos of new homes that are under construction because it’s impossible to shoot a good photo of a home that was just framed.

This is especially relevant because one-third of our current sales are new homes now.

Pay close attention to the words “photo similar” when you’re looking at online listings.

Those words mean that the home you’re viewing online isn’t the home being built.

Don’t be surprised if you think you’ve found your dream home with white/light gray kitchen cabinetry and quartz counters, then discover stained cabinets with laminate counters when you view the actual home.

Why Not Do It The Easy Way?

You don’t have to put yourself through all of that.

The easy way to find the right home is to let me do it for you.

The first step is our initial consultation, which can be done in person, or on the phone.

Our initial consulation will include me asking you detailed questions while I take notes about your answers.

My first question will be something like “Let’s start with you telling me what you’d like to accomplish”.

From there, we will drill into details of your timing, intended financing, and needs, wants, likes, and dislikes.

This consultation is vitally important because it allows me to shop our listing inventory using your criteria, blended with my 47 years’ experience and extensive knowledge of our market.

The next step, prior to your buying trip, occurs when I use my deep broker-level MLS search tools to identify possible solutions.

Following that, I will complete drive-bys and preview the homes that meet your criteria before you arrive.

I usually eliminate most of the listings I research for reasons of location, builder quality, development quality, pricing, and a long list of really picky criteria (click on the links immediately below for examples) developed over many years.

The Ideal Eagle Idaho Home: Part I

The Ideal Eagle Idaho Home: Part II

This proven business practice allows me to show you the best of the best homes without wasting your time while dragging you through 20 homes and hoping you like one.

Amazingly, it also often results in me knowing which home you will buy before you view homes because I’ve done my “home work” in advance.

Sound interesting?

Give me a call at (208)938-5533 and let’s get started!

You’ll enjoy my refreshing straight talk.

BTW ~ don’t be surprised if I recommend that you avoid most of the homes you saw online.

Eagle, Idaho Community Information

Tour of Eagle Video

Eagle Country Lifestyle Video

Meridian Idaho Homes With Virtual Staging

I recently had my first encounter with the world of virtual staging!

Meridian Idaho Homes

While researching Meridian Idaho homes for a buyer recently, I ran across a listing in MLS that appeared to be unusually attractive and perhaps even underpriced (a rarity in our current market).

It was built by an entry-level builder and the photos represented the home to have slab granite counters, beautiful high-end furnishings, expensive art work on the walls, and extensive mature landscaping.

I also noticed that the status was “Back On Market”, which seemed odd for such an attractive home.

So, I called the listing agent to confirm what I had seen and get more information.

The listing agent told me that her sale had fallen through due to the buyer’s inability to secure financing and that the home was indeed back on the market.

I then commented on how nice the home appeared in the MLS photos.

To my amazement, she replied “oh, it doesn’t really look like that because I used virtual staging”.

Virtual staging is computer-generated photography/videography that creates a false appearance that’s better than reality.

Turns out the home had been a rental, was trashed, and the landscaping was burned up because the sprinkler system wasn’t working.

There was no disclosure of virtual staging in the MLS listing.

If I had relied upon what I saw in the MLS photos, and shown the home, my buyer would’ve been disappointed (and probably angry).

And, I would’ve been furious at wasting both my client’s and my time.

Fortunately, I called the listing agent first and avoided wasting my time.

I’m not a believer of virtual staging.

If it’s undisclosed, it’s blatant misrepresentation.

At best, it’s akin to putting lipstick on a pig.

In the end, a pig is still a pig regardless of how much makeup you apply.

What ever happened to just telling the truth?

Read More About Meridian, Idaho

View The Tour of Meridian Video

Why Eagle Idaho Home Buyers Need To Get Pre-Approved

Why Eagle Idaho Home Buyers Need Pre-Approved Financing

Eagle Idaho Home

Sellers Require It

Eagle Idaho home sellers, and their listing agents, know better than to take their home off the market for a buyer who lacks pre-approved financing.

Doing so causes anxiety, uncertainty, and can damage salability if a sale falls through due to a buyer’s failure to obtain financing.

Know Your Costs

Buyers who get pre-approved before making offers also benefit from knowing the exact costs of their financing upfront.

A reputable lender will require you to formally apply for financing, then underwrite your pre-approval and provide a Truth In Lending disclosure that includes all mortgage costs.

Underwriting includes verifying source(s) of funds to close, employment, credit, and other lender criteria.

With an underwritten pre-approval, all that remains is documenting clear property title and an appraisal.

Beware of lenders who issue “pre-qualification” letters.

A pre-qual letter is a weak promise, usually including a laundry list of items that remain to be verified.

In real estate, we label pre-qual letters “Swiss Cheese” loan commitments (because they’re full of holes!)

Prove You Can Close

Eagle Idaho home sellers want to know that you can actually obtain financing.

Providing an underwritten loan commitment with your offer proves that you have been pre-approved for your financing.

Head Start With Your Financing

If you intend to finance your purchase, you will eventually need approval for your financing.

Getting pre-approved upfront eliminates rushing around arranging your financing after your offer is accepted and allows you to close sooner with fewer hassles.

Stronger Negotiating Position

In our fast-paced, strong seller’s market, you may face competing offers.

You don’t want to get into a multiple offer competition without pre-approved financing.

Savvy buyers with pre-approved financing always prevail vs. buyers lacking proof of financing in multiple offer situations.

Eagle, Idaho Community Information

Tour of Eagle Video

Eagle Country Lifestyle Video