Buy Your Dream Home or Horse Property With Confidence

So, you want to buy a horse property—now what? The home and land purchase can be an emotional, exciting, and also exhausting experience. You may also be wondering along the way—what am I missing? This is a common question. Here’s how the buying process works from start to finish.

• Do some preliminary online searching. Check into what homes or horse properties are selling for in the areas you’re interested in to give you an idea of what you’re looking for. This will help later on when communicating your wish list with your real estate agent.
• Take care of the budget. Use an online mortgage calculator to determine what your monthly mortgage payment would be if you were to purchase one of these homes or horse properties that you’ve found online. Make some additional estimates for utilities and see if this fits into your budget.
• Find an agent. A good real estate agent will help you navigate the process every step of the way. Your friends and family will be great sources—see if any of your trusted contacts have someone they recommend.
• Look at homes and horse properties. Be patient at this stage. Your real estate agent may show you a variety of homes or horse properties to get your reaction on features they think you’ll like. Give your agent detailed feedback so they can show you homes that are perfectly suited to you. Sometimes, this process can take months or years—So be patient. Also, make sure you let friends and family know you’re looking for a new home or a horse property--you may even find out about an amazing one before it hits the market.
• Make an offer. Once you’ve found your dream home or horse property, you may want to move quickly. Your agent will guide you on a reasonable first offer to start negotiations based on market conditions. Also, make sure you consider closing costs which could account for 2-5% of the property price.
• Closing. When your negotiations with the seller are successful, and the inspection came back clean, you should be ready to close. At your closing, you’ll spend a little over an hour signing lots of paperwork and then will be handed the keys.