• How to Buy a House - The Home Buying Institute Can Help

    Welcome to the Home Buying Institute. You've just found one of the largest collections of advice on how to buy a house. This website has been a compass for first-time home buyers since 2006. We publish independent and unbiased tutorials on subjects that are important to you -- credit scores, mortgage loans, house hunting, negotiations and more. You can learn about every aspect of the home buying process on this website.

    If you have a specific question right now, use the search box provided above. Otherwise, you can start with the featured articles and tutorials below.

    How to Buy a House: A Simplified Guide

    You'll find more than 400 home buying lessons on this website. This gives you some insight into the number of things you must consider, before you buy a house. There's a lot to learn! But don't worry -- you don't have to learn it all today. Just bookmark our website and come back often, until you feel comfortable with your knowledge level.

    To help you get started, we have put together an infographic that explains the home buying process in simple terms. If you ever feel confused or lost when researching a certain topic on our website, just come back to the home page and view this illustration. It will help you put things in perspective again.

    Home Buying Process

    Budgeting: If you're like most home buyers, you'll need to use a mortgage loan to buy a house (as opposed to paying cash). So before you go any further in the process, you should create a housing budget for yourself. You need to determine how much money you can afford to spend each month on a mortgage payment. And you can learn how to do it in this article.

    Loan options: Once you know how much you can spend on a house, you can move on to the next step to buying a home. You can choose the best type of loan for your particular situation. Your biggest choices are (A) fixed-rate versus adjustable-rate mortgages, and (B) conventional versus government-backed loans. You can learn more about these options in our mortgage shopper's guide, which has been updated and expanded for 2012.

    Pre-approval: Before you can buy a house, you'll need to find a lender. You also need to find out how much they are willing to lend you toward the purchase of your new home. The pre-approval process helps you accomplish both of these goals. It also gives you a competitive advantage when making an offer to buy a house. Sellers will take you more seriously if you've been pre-approved by a lender. You can start the process on this page.

    Home Buyer's Toolbox

    Mortgage Quotes

    Here are a couple of ways to move forward in the home buying process. You need to know your credit score before you try to buy a house (that is, if you're planning to use a mortgage loan). And you can't compare mortgages until you start gathering price quotes from lenders.

    The links provided below can help you accomplish these two tasks.

    Check Your Credit
    Your credit score will determine whether or not you can get approved for a home loan (and also what kind of interest rate you can get). Use the link below to get your score:
    Free Credit Score with enrollment in freecreditscore.com

    Get Mortgage Quotes
    Are you qualified for a mortgage loan? And if so, how much can you borrow based on your income and debt situation? There's only one way to find out:

    If you have questions about these things, be sure to use the search box at the top of this page. You can also click on the appropriate link within the main menu (credit or mortgage) to learn more about them. We have a wealth of information on these two topics, because they are both very important when buying a home.

    If you have questions about these things, be sure to use the search box at the top of this page. You can also click on the appropriate link within the main menu (credit or mortgage) to learn more about them. We have a wealth of information on these two topics, because they are both very important when buying a home.

    New Content and Features for 2012

    Buying a house in 2012 is a different scenario than when we first created this website, back in 2006. A lot has changed since then. We have witnessed the nearly complete collapse of the housing market, among other things. Mortgage lenders have tightened their lending guidelines as well. To keep pace with all of these changes, we have introduced a new series of tutorials for first-time home buyers in 2012. They contain all of the latest information on how to buy a house.

    Here are some mortgage-related tutorials you might want to start with:

    We've also created a Q&A website where you can post your home buying questions and concerns. You can learn more about it below.

    Have Questions About Buying a Home?

    We recently launched a new website that allows for more interaction than the Home Buying Institute. It's called Propzy.com, and it's built around a social-networking platform with Q&A discussion forums. If you have questions about how to buy your first house, you can post them on the Propzy website. It's free to join. You can get straight answers from the publishers of this website, and also from other home buyers like yourself.

    Sign up today at www.Propzy.com