Live your Style

Bozeman Real Estate

Buying

Your Needs Come First

Identifying Your Needs

Finding and buying the right home is a highly personalized process. The journey begins with a clear understanding of what you need and want in your future home.

Your Values, Interests, and Priorities

Consider what is most important to you. Reflect on your values, personal interests, and the priorities that will guide your decision-making process as you search for your new home.

Desired Home Features

Make a list of the features you are looking for. This might include the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, the size of the kitchen, outdoor spaces, or any other specific amenities that are essential to your lifestyle.

Community and Lifestyle Alignment

Think about how a community can best match your needs and support your preferred lifestyle. Evaluate neighborhoods based on factors such as proximity to work, access to schools, recreational facilities, and the overall atmosphere that fits your way of living.

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Defining Your Ideal HōM(e)

Clarifying Your Buying Intention

Whether you’re purchasing a home for the first time or returning as a repeat buyer, it is essential to clearly identify your motivation, the “why,” before beginning the process. The better you understand your reasons for buying, the easier it will be to identify a home that truly fits your needs.

Key Purchase Factors to Consider

Determine whether you will be working from home or commuting regularly, as this will influence your criteria.
Consider whether you are buying just for yourself or if you need to accommodate the needs of family members.
Reflect on whether your purchase is intended to fulfill your current requirements or if you are planning with your future needs in mind.

Learning from Past Experiences

To better understand what you need in your next home, it can be valuable to reflect on your previous living situations:

Identify one or more features you appreciated most in homes you have lived in before.
Don’t forget to consider aspects that did not quite meet your expectations or needs in your current or previous property. That information can be as helpful as what you do want!

Working with HōM 406

The rules, when it comes to buying real estate, have changed.

With the 2024 NAR ruling, no longer can agents open a door for you, as a buyer's agent, without an agency agreement in hand.

What does that mean?

We need to have a plan in place with you before you view a home, outlining how we, as buyer representatives, will be compensated. While this has not fundamentally changed how we transact at HōM 406, this shift has created numerous questions for buyers.

Understanding Buyer Agent Compensation

In many cases, the Seller still pays for us to represent you, as a buyer.

However, it is possible the home may not be listed, or the Seller (or Seller's Agent) isn't offering Buyer Agent compensation, or they aren't offering the same amount we have agreed upon to advocate for you.

These moving pieces don't mean you necessarily need to come up with the cash to compensate us. Based on what is best for your negotiation, we can write our compensation into your purchase contract, with your permission, or we can negotiate our compensation independently with you and leave it out of the purchase contract.

If you are obtaining financing, the loan can include our compensation via the Buyer Compensation Agreement you'll sign before you view your first house. Don't fret, these changes do not change how you buy a home, or the end-of-day cost, just the minutiae of how. As always, how we are compensated does not affect the properties we elect to show you.