5 Tips For Buying A Home Long Distance & Out Of State

Are you buying a house long distance? Well, that’s what we’re talking about today and we are starting right now.

Hi, This is Ledeana Strand in Port Orchard, Wa. If this is your first time to this channel, you want to learn everything about working, eating, sleeping, living, playing, make sure you tap that subscribe button and click the little bell so you’re notified every time I do a new video. I get calls, emails, texts, every single day, I’m helping them and I absolutely love it. People, if you’re thinking about moving, relocating here to the Northwest Wa. area, make sure you give me a call, shoot me a text, send me an email, However you want to get ahold of me. I’ve got your back when moving to the Northwest Wa. Area.

 So, are you buying a house long distance? Well, I’ve got five tips to help make your life easier.

Tip number one, do your research if you are moving to an area that you’ve never been to before. So for instance, here in Northwest Wa.  we have all sorts of different areas. We’ve got Kitsap County which include cities such as Bremerton, Silverdale Poulsbo, etc., we’ve got Mason County, we’ve got Pierce County, we’ve got got area’s closer to the ferry terminals if you are commuting, we’ve got water front properties if taking in the view is more your thing, and they all have their various pros and cons. So, you need to figure out where do you want to live based on what’s important to you.

Do you want to be where the good schools are? Do you want to have a good commute distance in the morning? Do you want to be where There are lots of other families that have small kids because you do, do you want to have an area where you can walk everywhere because you’re a single person and you want a more urban environment, so do your research.

 Start trying to narrow it down so that if you’re only going to come to town for say a long weekend, you’re not looking at houses that are 30 miles apart. We’re trying to narrow it down to make the best use of your time when you come to town for your house hunting trip.

 Tip number two, see if you can find a local real estate agent in the area where you’re going that will help you long distance. I work with a ton of buyers that are moving here from out of the area, so what I do is I go to the properties they’re interested in and I take videos and send them the videos so that they can watch them from wherever they live.

Now that way they can kind of get an idea of what is the area like and do I like this house? Do I want to see this house, When I come to town for my trip or, did it not meet my needs so I can just cross it off the list?

Tip number three is then narrow it down. So let’s say you’ve identified maybe two or three towns where you want to consider living and you’ve been looking at a bunch of houses online and you’ve narrowed it down. If you’re only coming to town for a couple of days, seeing 30 houses really isn’t realistic, it’s going to be incredibly stressful and for you, they’re just going to all blend together and then you can’t remember well, which was the one that had that really awesome kitchen because now you can’t remember. You’ve just seen too many. So, try to narrow it down so that you’re going to see a reasonable number of houses when you are here in town.

Tip number four is know your market. Rely on the real estate agent that’s helping you to tell you, is it a buyer’s market,Or, Is it a seller’s market there? That’s going to help you craft a strong offer that has a better likelihood of being accepted. If there are a hundred houses for sale and only 50 buyers out there shopping, then it’s a buyer’s market.

If there are 50 houses for sale and a hundred buyers out there shopping, then it’s a sellers market and you need to know what kind of activity is going on in your market so that you know how to craft the strongest offer that has the best likelihood of getting accepted the first time around.

 Tip number five is do your inspections anyway. So you came to town, you looked at a bunch of homes, you found the right one, you wrote an offer and yay, it was accepted and now you go back home.

Do your inspections anyway, your real estate agent can attend those inspections on your behalf. It’s really important that you don’t skimp on the inspections if you are not personally there to be going through the house to check all these things out for yourself.

 And last but not least is a bonus tip. The actual closing. How are you going to do it? Are you going to close out of state or are you going to fly back for the closing itself? I highly recommend that you fly back and here’s why. If you sign, let’s say that you live in Nevada and you are going to sign all of your loan docs in Nevada, you may have to sign at a local title company or a local real estate agent’s office and do all of that paperwork. They FedEx it back and then the title company here in Wa. gets it and says, oops, you missed a signature on page one.

Oh, that is a huge pain. It can delay your closing and then the seller is not happy. Nobody’s happy if it doesn’t get closed on time simply because of a clerical error.

There’s also an additional fee for doing that and by the time you add a couple hundred bucks worth of fees, you probably could have just bought a really inexpensive plane ticket.

 So, if at all possible, fly to Washington or drive to Washington, sign all of the paperwork and then go back to your town again. It’s the less likelihood of something going wrong.

So now you know how to make your life easier and less stressful if you are buying a house long distance. If you’re moving, relocating to the Northwest Wa. area, make sure you reach out. Give me a call, shoot me a text, send me an email or however you want to get ahold of me, I would love to chat. And before you leave, don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you don’t miss any of my future videos. Thank you for watching, and I will see you on the next one.