Rebecca Brayton: Buying your first home is a daunting task that should not be undertaken alone. Hi! I’m Rebecca Brayton and welcome to watchmojo.com. And today in part three of our interview with Sandra Rinomato, host of HTTV’s Property Virgins, will be learning more about the home buying process. What kind of team does a person need to assemble when buying home?

Sandra Rinomato: I absolutely recommend building a team of professionals early on so you want to get a good mortgage consultant? Very early because you want to check your credit, you want to make sure everything’s is in orders sometimes you have to have a plan in order to bring up your credits score. Clean all some issues from the past, you know they don’t teach credit manipulation in high school but it’s should be definitely be a course. If you know that you’re going to be in the market maybe start frequenting open houses in the neighbor that’s you want to buy and then meet some realtors and talk with them, ask them questions. Everybody has different personalities right? So, if you are statistic oriented and you want to get the kind of realtor that can rhyme off some stats for you. Another group of professionals you should have on your team or home inspectors, you might even need to find a structure engineer but home inspector sometimes are both so that’s a good thing to have as well. So, the lists are long and a good team of professionals can take a lot of stress away for you.

Rebecca Brayton: In general is there a magic number of how much you should put down?

Sandra Rinomato: The more you can put down the better because it decreases your mortgage amount, which decreases your monthly expense. But you don’t want to put absolutely everything you have into a down payment because then you’re left with nothing for renovations or buying appliances, furniture, whatever you need. So, put as much as you can without emptying out your savings account. If you can get 20% down then you can avoid the high insurance cost to the mortgage loan. So, that would be a good goal.

Rebecca Brayton: How long should it take to find the right home?

Sandra Rinomato: You know, that’s the good question because with the internet it has actually come down in the last 10 years. It used to be about 10 houses on average people with look at before they found the right one. Now, it’s going to three to six on average and that’s because people are surfing the net, they’re seeing houses the shock factor happens in the privacy of their own home and they’re like going to “What?” That’s what a million dollars get you or whatever you know. So, they’re more, savvy now before they ever go out to look out there first house which is wonderful.

Rebecca Brayton: Thanks you very much.

Sandra Rinomato: You’re welcome.