Guide to Buying Real Estate in Nanaimo





Buying a home can be an extremely stressful experience. It involves decisions that will affect your happiness and your financial well-being for a long time to come. Finding a Realtor who has a wealth of experience and a personality that fits with your own, is critical to making the transaction smooth, stress-free and safe. British Columbia has enacted laws to govern the Realtor’s responsibility for protecting the best interests of the client.



Starting Off Right

 

Your Relationship with a Real Estate Professional (RECBC form excerpts)

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If you are the client of a real estate professional, they work on your behalf. The real estate professional representing you has special legal duties to you, including a real estate professional who is not representing you as a client does not owe you special legal duties. (ask for the full form explaining relationships).

NOTE: It is never a good idea to call listing agents of properties that interest you. They cannot legally represent you or put your best interests above the interests of their Seller.

You can work with a real estate professionals in one of the following ways:

As a client:

  • Loyalty
  • Full disclosure
  • Avoid conflicts of interest
  • Confidentiality

As a non-client:

  • No Loyalty
  • No duty of full disclosure
  • No duty to avoid conflicts
  • No Confidentiality



Buyer Guide to the Process:

The Process of buying a property involves finding the right property, making an offer to purchase it conditional upon you being satisfied that its a good property after doing your homework on it.

The condition period gives you about 10 days to 2 weeks to complete all your inquiries. There are times, however, in fast markets that the due-diligence period is shorter due to Sellers being reluctant to keep their property off the market for that long, but generally 2 weeks is the average. It is extremely important to have your conditions satisfied by the date specified in the contract so not to lose the home to another buyer standing by. Sellers are not obligated to extend the deadline for condition removal so stay focused and work hard to get it all done on time. When conditions are met, the sale of the property becomes unconditional and firm. It’s a good idea to get the major inspections done sooner in the due-diligence time frame in case issues arising from those inspections require re-negotiating.

 





The 15 Steps to Home Buying

 

1. In order of importance, make a list of 10 items you want or need in a home.

2. Get pre-approved for financing. This will give you a shopping price range/budget.

3. Meet your Realtor to discuss your needs and review the process.

4. Tour properties that match your wants and needs.

5. Having found a potential property that fits, evaluate it against your wants and needs list.

6. Review a market value assessment of the potential property to ensure it’s priced to market value.

7. Prepare and present an offer to purchase.

8. Once the offer is accepted, conduct in-depth inspections of the property. (rough duration; 2 weeks)

9. Deliver the agreed upon deposit on time. Very important it’s on time.

10. Confirm the property meets the lenders' conditions for financing.

11. Hire and carry out inspections.

12. Confirm insurability of the home.

13. Upon condition removal, hire a lawyer to carry out the transaction and finalize home insurance.

14. Start packing. Woot woot

15. Arrange for utility set-up and mail delivery.