When is a good time to start looking to buy a house if you are currently renting? Like 1-3 months before your lease is up? My fiancé and I don’t want to rush the home buying process, but wanted to see if anyone has experienced this and their thoughts if they would have done something differently.

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I will say I thought 3 months would be plenty and now I’m relieved we started earlier.

We are in NYC and are currently renting. Hopefully I’m an outlier with this situation but my timeline so far has looked like the below:

Jan 2022: first see listing and start going to open houses. Continue saving & and establishing rough budget. Mortgage rates at 3.0%

7/31: see dream condo and decide that we can afford it. Work on gathering documentation for pre-approval and find buyer agent and attorney

8/15: officially make offer, negotiate for a few days before accepted. Our first hurdle happened here where our bank took 3 wks instead of 1 to send earnest money deposit check to seller attorney

8/21: inspection (find that a tub needs to be removed, re-negotiate price)

9/15: check received, finally go into contract officially

9/21: engage a different lender because first few would not work on this type of condo. appraisal. Locked rate at 6.25.

10/15: lender flags they actually can’t do the loan based on the condo financials. Lose rate.

10/21: engage another lender (our last try). Lock new rate, 7.57. Cry.

And that’s where we’re at and haven’t done the title report, tub removal etc and are supposed to close 12/1. 😩

The silver lining is our lease technically ends 5/31/23 so we are ok from that end.

My point is more time is better if there is no major rush to move out. Hope this helped and that your situation isn’t nearly as complicated…

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I think I needed to vent haha. Hoping it works out 🤞🏻 and good luck to you

I’d start 2-3 months out. Even if you somehow find something quickly and can make a deal the process to negotiate final details and close takes time. It took us 6 weeks from our initial offer to getting keys

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Mortgages are paid in arrears and rent is paid forward so if you time everything appropriately you should not need to carry both the housing payment and rent payment in the same month. It is never really too early to explore your options. You may want to have the lender wait on pulling credit if you are 3-4 months away from buying but it is a good idea to at least get the process started to avoid any potential surprises. Let me know if you need any help.

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We know we want to try and buy a house after the lease is up. It’s like an extra $250 a month for rent if we go “month to month” if we do not find a home right away. also, we are trying to avoid paying a mortgage and rent in the same month if possible.

It depends on what the market is like where you are. I would start looking further out than that, partly because I’ve seen friends struggle to find a place/get things sorted in time for their lease end when there was huge inventory, and partly because I am getting ready to close on a place after having had to look for more than two months due to very low inventory (I only saw nine houses during that time!). Also, keep in mind that you’ll likely need at least 30 days for the closing.

Just moved in to first home less than a week ago. We were in the same shoes, our lease ends end of December and our first mortgage payment is due in Jan/Feb (don’t remember, yikes). Always close a little after the 1st because your first payment is due 1-2 months after that month depending on lender.

We started looking in August found home mid October.

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