What are the steps to buying a home in Knoxville?  While the process may be a bit intimidating, if you follow these steps it can be a fun and super rewarding experience.  Once you start skipping steps, you will find the process gets more difficult.  Here are the 12 steps to buying a home in Knoxville:

• Step 1: Sit down with a real estate agent to discuss and analyze your wants and needs. This very important step can set the tone for the success of your home search.
• Step 2: You and your Knoxville real estate agent establish a working relationship with each other.  You are officially a team!
• Step 3: You speak with a lender and get pre-approved for financing.  This important step will help guide you so you make sure you are looking at homes you can afford.  The other option if you have the ability, is to pay cash.
• Step 4: This is where the fun begins!  This is when you and your dedicated buyer specialist venture out in search of your next home.
• Step 5:  You’ve found that special place you want to call your Knoxville home.
• Step 6: You sit down with your Knoxville real estate agent to write up an offer, you write a check for your escrow deposit, and your agent gets the offer presented to the seller.  Negotiations begin.
• Step 7: The seller accepts your offer.  Hurray! At this time you begin the home inspection process and work on removing any contingencies in your offer.
• Step 8: You complete your full mortgage application.  This includes the lender pulling your full credit report, ordering an appraisal on the home you are buying, and verifying your employment and finances.
• Step 9: Your loan goes into underwriting.  This is where the final decision is made on whether you get loan approval.  Underwriting can approve your loan, reject your loan, or give you additional conditions to meet in order to approve the loan.
• Step 10:  Your loan has been approved and the file is sent to the Title Company or Closing Attorney to complete a Title Examination on the home your purchasing as well as setup your insurance and in some states complete a survey.
• Step 11:  All of the documentation is pulled together for closing day.
• Step 12.  It’s closing day!  You meet to bring your down payment money, sign all of the loan documents, and get the keys to your new home.  Let moving day begin!

To discuss buying a home in Knoxville or to get any answers about any of these steps, contact me, Troy Stavros, with Gables & Gates, REALTORS at 865-999-0925 or by clicking here.