Whether you are a first time home buyer or a seasoned investor every client is treated like family here. We believe everyone should be treated with dignity and respect throughout the home buying process.
As you can see on the many pages of our website, we start our luxury services to buyers by attempting to provide the best, most information packed website available about real estate in central Maine. We also have one of the most powerful and feature rich MLS search engines for searching Maine homes for sale. We know that many people like to start their search on the internet, and we want to allow you to shop in the comfort of your own home for as long as you like. Pushy salespeople are SO annoying and we’re not like that We may contact you to see if you need help but we definitely won’t be annoying about it!
When you are ready to begin looking in person at property, we start the process with a private consultation, either at our offices or at your home, whichever you prefer, where we can get to know each other and determine more about what your real estate goals are, your budget constraints, and what features and amenities are must haves and dreams for you. We also ask you to sign and review Agency Disclosure and Buyer Representation Agreements, so that everyone understands the important relationship between us going forward.
Once we understand what your ideal home consists of, we will be hard at work, scouring the new listings daily and networking with our fellow Realtors to find out about listings that aren’t on the MLS. We’ll do our research and the necessary preparation to speed up the process of finding the best options for you to consider further.
Finally, we’ll take you for private tours of the best central Maine homes for sale to see which ones meet your needs. We’re pretty good at our jobs — we think you will find that we can zero in fairly quickly once we understand what you are looking for.
Create saved searches to link to. This can be for homes based on price range or property characteristics.
It is very important to get pre-approved before really beginning your home search. With interest rates where they are now, you may be pleasantly surprised at how much home you can afford! And if by chance you were not already pre-approved and found your dream home, it would be a terrible thing to lose it because you were not ready to make an offer while others were. Our team includes several great lenders that we highly recommend, or we are more than happy to work with another lender that has been recommended to you. Please, though, don’t just go with an internet lender like Lending Tree or Quicken — we have had horrible experiences with this type of lender due to appraisal issues and we do NOT recommend using a firm like this.
We use Escrow companies as neutral third parties to hold the funds for each side until the transaction is final and to handle all the necessary deed transfers. This is always done in conjunction with a Title Company who ensures that your title is free and clear of all “liens” which are claims against the property. You can generally assume escrow fees of $2 per thousand dollar of purchase price plus $500 as a quick rule of thumb, though this will vary slightly depending on whether you are the buyer or the seller and some other factors. Title fees will run between $1000 and several thousand dollars, again depending on the price of the property.
A home warranty can protect you for the first year after the sale with any covered item costing only a single $65 service call, no matter how expensive it is to fix. If you are a seller, this protection ensures that silly law suits don’t start about something like a failing furnace, a dead oven, or a leaking pipe. If you are a buyer, the home warranty gives you peace of mind to know that you are not going to have a sudden emergency arise when you have already scraped all your cash together for the initial down payment. These warranties are a win-win for everyone so be sure to ask us about one.
Are you relocating to this area? Looking for more information to help you find the right city and neighborhood for your family? If you are from out of town, we might next conduct an area tour, giving you the chance to see several different parts of central Maine where our experience tells us that there is the best chance of finding your dream house in your budget range. This will give you the opportunity to evaluate different neighborhoods and help us to focus in on what your likes and dislikes are right from the start.
Our relocation guide includes the most up-to-date and vital information for people looking to move to our area.
We love to work with First Time Buyers — it is great fun to help someone get started building their wealth and help them find a great place to live while doing it! We can often help first timers find a great home within their budget that may be a diamond in the rough — and we can help you get all the resources to do that, including passing on discounts for appliances, plumbing fixtures, granite, tile, lighting, etc. Or if you are intimidated by this idea, we can help you find neighborhoods where you can find a terrific move-in-ready home within your starter home budget.