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A review by peacelovemath
Home Buying for Dummies by Eric Tyson
3.0
Since we've bought a house, I guess I'm finished reading this book.
I learned some good things from this book, but I think it was aimed at someone looking to buy their dream home that they plan to live in forever. Paul and I were looking to buy our first home, and we would have been happy with any number of different homes as long as they met our price, space, and functional requirements; we weren't planning on spending months and months looking at every house on the market.
One thing in particular that was weird about this book was their advice on finding a realtor, and then what a realtor should be doing for you. They said you should interview multiple realtors and then call people the realtors had worked with over the last year as references. Once that arduous process was complete, we were instructed to expect our realtor to visit all the houses we were interested in without us, take additional pictures of her own, and then only show us the best houses. That might make sense if we were looking for our very specific dream home and planned to spend a quarter million or more, because then 3% of the purchase price might have made all that worth her while. But 3% of the lower-end price range we were aiming for hardly buys us that level of single-minded work from our realtor. She's done a very good job, and we are getting a great house at a great price that exceeds our expectations in all the important categories.
I'm going to put this one on amazon.com for resale; buy it used or else check it out of the library. This one is worth a skim, but not a dedicated read-through.
I learned some good things from this book, but I think it was aimed at someone looking to buy their dream home that they plan to live in forever. Paul and I were looking to buy our first home, and we would have been happy with any number of different homes as long as they met our price, space, and functional requirements; we weren't planning on spending months and months looking at every house on the market.
One thing in particular that was weird about this book was their advice on finding a realtor, and then what a realtor should be doing for you. They said you should interview multiple realtors and then call people the realtors had worked with over the last year as references. Once that arduous process was complete, we were instructed to expect our realtor to visit all the houses we were interested in without us, take additional pictures of her own, and then only show us the best houses. That might make sense if we were looking for our very specific dream home and planned to spend a quarter million or more, because then 3% of the purchase price might have made all that worth her while. But 3% of the lower-end price range we were aiming for hardly buys us that level of single-minded work from our realtor. She's done a very good job, and we are getting a great house at a great price that exceeds our expectations in all the important categories.
I'm going to put this one on amazon.com for resale; buy it used or else check it out of the library. This one is worth a skim, but not a dedicated read-through.