Home Buying Guide

5 easy step-by-step guide on buying your dream home

Step 1: Analyze your needs and why you are buying a home

Your home is important in many ways, it's a place to relax, unwind and spend quality time with family and friends. Decide what you are looking for in a property - whether you need parking and a garden, how many bedrooms you need, what luxury facilities you want, will it be a swimming pool, gym, spa, landscaped gardens, jogging path, courts or if possible all of it. You have to choose whether you want to live in a condominium, townhouse apartment or in a house and lot. The reason is because this probably the biggest investment you'll make.

**TIP: The secret to buying a home is finding a house in a neighborhood you love: that includes safe and secured, complete amenities, great schools within the vicinity, excellent transportation and increasing home value.

Step 2: Work out how much you can afford

For most people a home is much more than a place to live, it's a long-term investment. This is your opportunity to find a home that's not only good value upfront, but holds its value over time. Your decisions at this stage will have important consequences for your future, so you want to get it right.

When you start looking at homes, it's easy to focus on the short term - 'what can I afford right now?' House and lot in the city are much more expensive specially if located in prime locations such as Makati, Bonifacio Global City and McKinley Hill that is why for most urban professionals and starting family, condominiums is much more preferable to them since it is affordable and at the same time closer to the city or to their work place.

**TIP: When you are working on your budget, do not just look for homes that you think is affordable to you, you must always consider the location. You have the opportunity to maximize your investment by choosing a place that's close to everything you need and well connected to public transport. Being able to walk or cycle to shops, schools and public transport not only makes life easier but healthier too. A better location might a bit higher in price but ultimately it's worth it when you factor everything including everyday travel expenses and convenience.

Step 3: Talk to a Property Consultant

Although all the decisions will come to you, whenever you will buy a house you will always need to deal with a real estate agents or a property consultants. Real estate agents or property consultants will help you make a better decision by providing you more detailed information on the properties you are buying. They are a great source of first hand information on future developments and establishments in the area where you want to buy your property - specially if your property consultant is an in-house agent of the company.

**TIP: So when talking to a property consultant, you must ask all the questions and concerns in your mind. Find out where are the locations of commercial areas, how far are the schools, the transportation mode, where are the malls, how to go there and etc. Just by talking to them you will save a lot of time and tons of research you will normally have if you will do the research yourself.

Step 4: Choose Payment Scheme that is convenient to you

There are two types of properties being sold out there, pre-selling projects and ready-for-occupancy (RFO) projects. Pre-selling are properties that are not yet built and normally it will take 2-3 years before the completion. RFO on the other hand are properties which you can move in instantly.

So when choosing whether to buy a pre-selling or RFO properties this will rely to you entirely. if you need to move now, then get an RFO but if you don't need it now but just want to invest, then it will be better to buy properties on pre-selling stage, the big difference between the two are the price of the property and their terms of payment.

For RFO properties price are definitely higher than those in pre-selling. Depending on the location, some properties could double their price from pre-selling to RFO in just 3 years. So imagine a property that was being sold at pre-selling for 1M and after completion of the project it will be cost 2M in just 3 years.

As for the terms of payments, it is harder to negotiate for terms for RFO properties and the developer will always require you to make a downpayment from 20% to as high as 50%. So if you are buying a condominium worth 5M, the downpayment is 20%, you will need cash out 1,000,000 to buy the property then the rest will be through amortizations. For pre-selling properties, it is more flexible and few developers offer "No Downpayment" and even 0% interest for as long as 5 years.

**TIP: So always find out the different options on you can pay your amortizations, sometimes when you talk to a property consultant, they will provide you different methods or payment schemes, study those if you find it convenient to you and if you think you have different method in mind or want a tailor fit payment scheme, do not be hesitant to offer a proposal to your property consultant because if they find you interested they will try to have your proposal approve to the upper management.

Step 5: Closing the Deal

Most often, first time home buyers are scared of the legal process involve in a purchasing property, but this process is relatively very simple. If you are buying a pre-selling property, all you have to do is to sign an application form, pay a reservation of P25,000, present 2 valid ID's and show proof of income, normally a payslip or bank statement and that's it, you now have your property.

The good thing about buying a pre-selling property is that credit background check is not that strict unlike for RFO properties. For RFO  a lot of things are being considered, your income level should match on the property you are buying. If you want to have your mortgage in a bank so the interest rate is lower, then you must satisfy them that you have the capacity to pay for the monthly amortizations otherwise they will turn down your loan, making it hard for you to acquire property.

**TIP: Although legal process on acquiring an RFO properties may seem to be much stressful, the only way to ease this is again is to ask your property consultant on what documents you need to prepare ahead of time, your property consultant will give you advice on how to easily accomplish all of these.