When buying a house, your agent will tell you not to do this. But you should do this.

I just bought my first house. So I’m a newbie. I got an agent. Based on his advice and his company’s website, I probably should not be sharing this. But I’m going to share it anyway.<br><br>When you figure out how much you have available to spend on a house, multiply the number by 30%. That is how much your agent will want you to spend, because they get commission based on your purchase price. An agent is not supposed to tell you that, so ignore him, and go out and buy a house that is 30% lower in price than your budget.<br><br>I ran into problems when I first started working with my agent because all of the houses I wanted were too expensive.<br><br>My agent was relieved when I found houses that I liked but that were slightly less expensive. He was on a deadline for his next course, and his next three houses were the ones that closed. He had probably been worried that he was going to be real busy working with a tight budget. He was not looking forward to that. <br><br>But when he found a house that was 10% below my budget, I was relieved. I could tell he was happy too, because we could close quickly. I was not looking forward to all of those open houses. <br><br>We closed in a week.<br><br>Edit: I see a lot of people telling me that buying a house is more expensive than buying an apartment. I’ve lived in both, and if anything, I’ve found houses to be cheaper than apartments. Unless you have a spouse and kids to help pay your rent, in which case a house will be probably more expensive. <br><br>Anyway, buying a house does require some additional expenses that I ran into for the first time in the last several weeks. If you are in the same situation as me, here is my advice.<br><br>If you are going to buy a house for the first time, get a home inspection. Do not pay the inspector yourself. Work with your agent to get the seller to pay for it.<br><br>If you are going to buy a house for the first time, you will need to buy homeowner’s insurance. Based on my experience, you will need to pay for a year’s worth of insurance in advance. This is because the insurance company will give the money to your lender, which will then use that money every month to pay for your insurance. Unless you have a spouse and kids to help pay your bills, in which case you can save money by paying for the insurance yourself rather than paying the lender’s fee.<br><br>I have heard that homeowner association fees can be high, but my HOA fees are low so I did not run into that problem personally. I cannot give any advice about that. Based on my experience, I would say just accept the fees and pay for them. Do not try to get the seller to pay for them. Based on my experience, your agent will accept the fees and the seller will not have any trouble with that. Because those fees are very low, and no one will save any money by paying for them. If you do not try to get the seller to pay for them, you will save money by not paying your agent’s fee. <br><br>Edit: I guess I should not have given specific advice about how you should run your life. Some of you have run into different experiences. Many of you have spouses or kids. Based on the comments, this seems to be a common situation. The common thread is that you all paid the full price of the house. <br><br>I hope this is just because of sample bias. The people who paid the full price of the house are more likely to comment and tell me I’m wrong.