Here are 5 Purchasing Strategies for Apartments in New York, Manhattan for 2012
1. Check your credit. Take my word for it: there is no bad surprise worse than a bad credit surprise. Okay, maybe there is one thing worse – a credit surprise you receive while you’re in the midst of trying to buy a home!
Recent studies have revealed that a record high number of real estate transactions are falling out of escrow, and that credit “issues” are a leading cause of these dead deals. Your best chance at catching and correcting score-lowering errors and other derogatory items before they destroy your personal American Dream is to start checking and correcting while you still have time on your side.
Read: How to Buy an Apartment in Manhattan and Get the Best Interest Rate
2. Do your research. The more rapidly the real estate market changes in a New York minute, the more it behooves smart buyers to study up before they jump in. Winter is a great time – you can start doing online and in-person research into topics ranging from:
· Manhattan neighborhoods. Whether you’re doing a corporate relocation package, looking for relocation rentals or simply trying to narrow down the local districts to focus on during your 2012 house hunt, December/ January is a great time to start your online research into decision-driving factors like tax rates, school districts, neighborhood character and even prices in various areas. Call a Manhattan real estate agent who can help you make the neighborhood-lifestyle match.
Once you narrow things down and start speaking to your Manhattan realtor, ask them to brief you on the local market dynamics, including how long Manhattan housing typically stay on the market and whether they generally go for more or less than the asking price, so you can be smart about how you search.
· Manhattan Real estate brokers, mortgage pros and real estate closing attorneys specializing in the Manhattan market. If you don’t already have your pros picked out, now is the time to get on the horn or drop an email or Facebook message to your circle of contacts, asking them for a referral to a Manhattan real estate broker or agent they love. Follow up by: checking whether these pros are active in responding to your questions and queries in a timely manner. Your Manhattan broker will also have a list of recommended professionals that they have used.
· What you get for your money. Online house hunting is a powerful tool. But there comes a point in your house hunt where an ocular inspection is mandatory to get an accurate sense of what home features, aesthetics and location characteristics correlate with what price points.
Mortgage musts. You can read a bunch of articles about mortgages and get yourself pretty far down the path toward qualifying for a home loan, but you can only get a personalized action plan for a smooth road ‘home’ by talking with a Manhattan mortgage broker and having them assess your basic financials. Especially– since Manhattan is filled with unique and complicated purchasing requirements because of our 70% co-op housing market, you will want to ensure that you have a mortgage specialist who can get you through our complicated financial requirement processes to buy into vertical subdivisions.
3. Fluff up your cash cushion because you will need 20% down or more for 95% of the co-op buildings you will be purchasing into. No matter how much you’ve saved, you’ll find that you could use more once you activate your home buying action plan. Mark my words – after closing, you’ll crave extra cash to do some repairs, upgrade a couple of things, buy appliances, or more importantly– the co-op board will require you to have a minimum of 6-12 months of liquid cash reserves to be able to to successfully purchase in the building.
So, if homebuying is on your personal 2012 action plan, hopefully you didn’t go hog wild on holiday gifts. Instead, wait until next year and give yourself the gift of a home this year.
4. Shed some stuff. Sell it. Donate it. Just get rid of it. If you did it before year’s end, you killed three birds with one stone: (a) getting some cold hard cash to go toward your savings, (b) getting some tax receipts that you can deduct the value of your donations in January, (c) minimizing money spent on holiday gifts for loved ones and these two bonus birds – clearing the mental clutter that physical clutter creates and prepping for your move in advance.
5. Sit very, very still and don’t change your spending habits. Sometimes, the best way to further our goals is to stop tripping ourselves up. In that vein, commit right now to refrain from making any major financial moves until you buy your home. Don’t quit your job to start that personal chef business (yet), don’t pull a bunch of cash out of your savings account (without getting clearance form your mortgage pro first), and don’t start buying cars, appliances and furniture on credit.
Call a Manhattan real estate broker who specializes in dog friendly apartments!
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