Live Bozeman Style

Buying

Your Needs Come First

Finding and buying the right home is a highly personalized process, and it all begins by identifying your needs.

Your values, interests, and priorities
The features you are looking for in a home.
How a neighborhood can best match your needs and lifestyle
How your home-finding process will need to be tailored to fit your plans
The support you expect to receive from HōM 406

Defining Your Ideal Home

Whether you’re buying a home for the first time, or are a repeat buyer, it’s essential to know your “why” before you buy. The more you know about your “why,” the easier time you’ll have finding your perfect home.

Key Considerations

How many people will be living in your household?
What would you consider a comfortable commute?
What are the essential activities for the members of your household?
What is something you disliked about the house or area where you lived previously?
What are one or more features you liked most about homes you’ve lived in previously?
What are the most “must-have” features of your ideal home and neighborhood?

The Homefinding Process

The following queries will help identify how to make finding a home an enjoyable experience.

What is your timeframe to move?
Who will be included in the home-finding and purchasing decisions?
Thinking of previous home-finding experiences, what were the most positive features of those experiences?
Were there any unpleasant features of your previous home-finding experiences that you hope to avoid this time?
What are your expectations of us as your real estate professionals?
What specific services and support do you expect?

You'll need access to explore the home-buying process in detail with an introduction to our custom home-buying guide. We would love to work with you and hope this tool will help introduce you to our Bozeman real estate expertise.

To request access to our proprietary HomeBuying Guide, please register using the form below.

Your Central Source for Bozeman Real Estate

We have access to virtually every property for sale in this market, regardless of whether or not it is being offered by a HōM 406 real estate sales professional, and will show you the homes that best match your criteria, including:

All homes marketed by our HōM 406 Real Estate Agents
All properties listed by other brokers through the Multiple Listing Services (MLS)
Properties offered by “For Sale by Owner.”
Properties advertised in newspapers or buyers’ guide
Properties advertised on the Internet
Open houses
Properties displaying “For Sale” signs

How to Look at Homes

Discovering the right home should be an exciting event. As a HōM 406 Broker, my commitment is to make your home search as stress-free as possible by:

Identifying up-front what is affordable
Viewing only those properties that most closely meet your unique needs
Utilizing the Home Finding worksheets (included in our custom Homebuyer Guide), we give you to evaluate each property by working with our rating system: "must-have," "would love to have," and "perfect world" checklist.
We will ask you to tell us your thoughts about each property you see – the positives and negatives and rate the home as a "one" or a "two."
We will continue to assess your needs and buying criteria and adjust our search as needed when needed.

Submitting an Offer

Once you have found the right property, the next step is to offer the Seller.

In a typical situation, you and your agent will draft an offer together to present to the owner via the owner’s representative (listing agent). The owner, in turn, may accept the offer, reject it, or make a counter-offer.

To present your best offer, we will:

Determine the price and timeline you want to offer the Seller
Finalize your financing
Review other issues that are important to you, such as:
Items of personal property you want to be included
Home Service Plan, inspections, repairs, etc.
Special concessions or limitations specific to your offer
Reference a calendar to ensure you can meet the dates outlined in the contract. Time is of the essence!

Because counter-offers are common (any change in an offer can be considered a “counter-offer”), you (buyers) need to remain in close contact with their agent advocate during the negotiation process so that any proposed changes can be quickly reviewed and responded to in a timely fashion.

Important Ways to Protect Your Interests

There are several ways to help support a trouble-free home purchase:

A written property disclosure or "Owners Property Disclosure" statement from the Seller will reveal any problems with the house and the surrounding area that you need to know about
Professional inspections can reveal structural, roof, mold, and other issues with the property
A home service or warranty plan can give you peace of mind by providing repair-or-replace coverage for major home operating systems and appliances.
A preliminary title report informs you of any problems with the property’s title, and a policy of title insurance protects your rights to the property.
A walk-through before closing will allow you to make sure all required work has been taken care of and that the property has been adequately cleaned and is ready to become your new home.

Completing the Home Buying Process

It can take 10-90 days to complete all the steps involved in a home sale, depending on the complexity of the transaction. We work closely with everyone involved in the process to help ensure that it moves ahead as smoothly as possible. It is our promise to:

Explain to you in detail all the steps that will occur and answer your questions
Work with the Seller’s agent to ensure that the Seller fulfills their responsibilities under the contract
Stay in touch with the escrow officer, title officer, lender, and other applicable parties to help coordinate activities and keep the transaction moving forward.
Communicate with you regularly via the communication type you prefer, keeping you informed and as worry-free as possible in this exciting time

Home Buyer Guide