How Do I Shop for a House Online?

Step 3: Deep Dive Research: Understanding The Neighborhood & Beyond

Tour the Home & Neighborhood In Person, take a house "test drive"

Shopping online and 3D virtual tours are great for narrowing down your search, but for a home, nothing can match visiting it in person. When you buy a car, the key step before making a purchase is the test drive. A test drive allows you to really feel what driving that car is like, how well you can see out all the windows and if the seats are comfortable with room for your purse and pet to ride along side.

Touring a home = a test drive

While touring a home, be sure to look for signs of maintenance issues, like squeaky floors, poor and poor water pressure. When you go to contract you will get an inspection, but look closely yourself during your visit, just like you would listen to a car as you test drive.

Test drive a resale home: you can book an appointment through the listing agent, and occasionally the home you want will be available via an open house. Online real estate platforms will show

Test drive a new construction home - meet with sales: New home builders want you to book an appointment with their sales counselor on-site. The new home consultant can show you all the options and explain the options the builder offers you. If you have specific requests, the sales person is there to try to make it happen for you. The downside of this process is having to talk to a sales person, and also working on their schedule.

Test drive a new construction home - the modern way: Some new home builders, including Legend Homes and Abodefy are pioneering the best way to test drive homes, which is self-touring. Self touring means you can book at tour right from your phone, on your schedule, 7 days per week, usually 7am to 9pm, including holidays and weekends. Bring a friend, a family member or a realtor! If you have questions a builder representative is just a text message away.

Usually all of the builders homes are available on the app, so you can book a tour of every home you want to visit.

Self tours can be booked at the property itself, so you can tour right away. No pre-appointment needed, unless someone is already in the home you want to tour.

Shop the Competition

To help you know if you are getting a great deal, our neighborhood data includes the 'Market MatchUP' feature which compares the home to others in that same market to give you better context. 'Market MatchUp' and 'Homes with a Similar Vibe' and give you an insightful competitive market analysis (realtors call them CMA's) to power your online neighborhood research.

You will want other important data about the neighborhood.

Each Abodefy listing address is clickable, and will take you to Google Maps, so you can calculate directions to work, to school, friends and family and search for the nearest H.E.B. grocery store or Target.

If you are searching in a city neighborhood, we recommend the service 'Walk Score' to get a sense for neighborhood walkability to life's daily necessities. WalkScore was acquired by Redfin, but we are fans.

To learn about school districts and start your research process, some national websites provide simple grades for schools, but it is important to realize that your child will be unique and it is worth making a visit to the school. For a quick and simple, Niche.com has data to get you started.

Step 4: Set Yourself Up for Success: The Financial Foundations of a Home Buying Budget

Since homes are the most expensive purchase most of us will ever make, your purchase budget always figures significantly into the process. This is where budgeting (that no-fun word), or realistically determining your comfortable monthly housing cost (mortgage, taxes, insurance, HOA, maintenance happens.

Abodefy Mortgage Calculator to Determine Your Home Purchase Budget

The Abodefy Mortgage calculator includes a simple and an advanced mode to let you fine tune your budget exploration. This calculator includes an affordability calculation that is based on decades of best practices. We go over those financial best practices below.

Starting from your income and what you have saved for a down payment, our calculator provides an estimated monthly payment. This monthly payment INCLUDES many items you may not immediately consider, including:

• Mortgage payment: this is the amount you borrow, known as principal, and interest, which is the money you are paying to borrow the funds the buy the home. The principal is the amount paid to the seller by the mortgage company, and the interest is what the mortgage company collects to loan you the money. When you hear about home mortgage rates, this is where the rate comes in to impact your house payment.

• Mortgage Insurance: very common when buyers have less than a 20% down payment, because it protects the lender and allows you to start home ownership sooner.

• Home Owners Associate Fees (if applicable): this is common in new home communities and those with established amenities

• Property Taxes: many new home buyers include paying their property taxes as part of their mortgage payment. What this means is the funds needed for your annual property taxes are collected by the mortgage company in an escrow account and then the mortgage company pays your property taxes from those funds when they are due. This saves many home buyers from having to budget for extra money at the start of the year.

• Debt to Income Ratio (DTI): Even if you go into purchasing a home with no debt like credit card balances or car payments, your home mortgage is a debt that you are taking on. To check that your new mortgage payment is affordable, the lender will verify that your Debt to Income Ratio including the mortgage is 36% of your income or lower. The lower that DTI is, the more comfortable making the payment every month will be. As long as the piggy bank in the image is green on our calculator, you are OK. You can adjust the slider and it will turn yellow or red.

Using Your Current Rent To Estimate Your Budget

What many people do to set a home buying budget is look at their monthly rent as a starting point, because that is an expense they are comfortable paying. Its a great shortcut, but there are many differences between a rent payment and a mortgage payment, so let's highlight a few of them.

Buying a house means paying yourself, not a landlord: A portion of your mortgage payment goes to principal, which is the amount you borrowed to buy the home. When you pay principal, that is the same as paying yourself. In the first years of a mortgage, you are mostly paying interest, but as time goes by on your mortgage, more and more of your monthly payment pays down principal, which is essentially your money.

Owners pay for maintenance: Rent often includes some maintenance costs, whereas homeowners pay their own maintenance costs. A big one that catches many homeowners off guard is lawn mowing, since your new grass will grow really fast.

Property Taxes & Insurance: Paying property taxes is one of the unpleasant parts of home ownership, but it also means you are invested in your community and you are really a part of something big. The schools, roads, police and fire support are no longer an abstract concept, but something you contribute to every year to live in a nice place. Homeowners insurance is the same, you made a big investment, and homeowners insurance is your way of protecting that investment in the event of something catastrophic.

Shopping New Construction Homes, Shop the Mortgage Deals from Your Builder

Many new home builders, including Abodefy and Legend Homes have mortgage bank partners who will help you during your home purchase to get you the best deal. Builders have a relationship with a mortgage company because financing is such an important part of the home buying process. The builder's mortgage resource is very well versed in the builder and their job is to make sure you get into that home, so they often can be very creative in working with your situation.

Examples of how a builder's mortgage resource can help you:

• Closing Cost Assistance

• Mortgage Rate Buy-Downs

• Partnering to Achieve Your Desired Closing Date

New home construction has many advantages, including a home builder warranty that gives great peace of mind, and financing assistance is another.

To learn all about Abodefy's financing process, read about Financing with Abodefy, and click through to the mortgage application. It takes less than 5 minutes to complete.

Step 5: Preparing for Next Steps - Making a Home Purchase Offer and Home Closing

Making an offer for the home is the finish line of the shopping process, but its the starting line of the home purchase process. Abodefy has built the smoothest most transparent process for making a home purchase offer and has the smoothest closing process in the industry. Abodefy Showcase homes offer an online closing process second to none.

We will keep you, your realtor (if you have one), your home builder and the mortgage company all up to date on the next steps to keep the process moving seamlessly and stress free.