Buying a Home: When to Get Preapproved, Schedule a Showing and Make an Offer

NEW EPISODE: Real Talk Real Estate Podcast

Buying a home soon? This week Jay Day and Andy Webb discuss real situations his clients have experienced over the last few weeks:

What's actually the FIRST step when you're thinking about buying?
You see a new listing hit the market — how fast should you go see it?
Does it make sense to "wait for the open house" instead of scheduling a showing?
When should you talk to a lender — before you look, or after you find "the one"?
Once you find a home you like, how long do you really have to decide on an offer?

These aren't hypotheticals — every one of these came from real buyers, real situations, real deadlines. If you're even thinking about buying in the next year, this episode will save you from a mistake we see buyers make every week.

HOUSE OF THE WEEK

1921 Fauna Dr, Frederick, MD — The Preserve at Tuscarora
$455,000 | 3 Beds | 3.5 Baths | 2,052 SqFt

Mountain views. Modern updates. Move-in ready. This one checks every box.

Bright, open-concept main level filled with natural light
Finished lower level — perfect for a family room, office, gym, or playroom
Updated bathrooms with new mirrors + sleek glass shower door
Low-maintenance composite deck + brand-new privacy fence
Attached 2-car garage for parking and storage
Community perks: walking trails, tot lot, and a shared library
Minutes from shopping, dining, commuter routes, and downtown Frederick

If you've been waiting for a townhome that actually feels like home the second you walk in — this is it.

Call 866-702-9038 to schedule your private tour before it's gone!

Real talk. Real results.

#JayDayAndTheDayHomeTeam #DayHomeTeam #LPTRealty #RealTalkRealEstatePodcast #FrederickMD #HouseOfTheWeek #ThePreserveAtTuscarora #FrederickRealEstate #MarylandHomesForSale

Episode Transcript

Andy: Hi, I'm Andy Webb.

Jay: I'm Jay Day.

Andy: And this is Real Talk Real Estate. Normally, Jay, when we come together, we have a set idea, and then we build out from that idea.

Jay: But today, I wanted to mess with you a little bit.

Andy: You came in and said, I'm not telling you what we're talking about. I want to put you on your toes. So here we are. And we say we're real talk. My toes are out. Let's do some real talk.

Jay: Let me see. I don't know. I think you probably have your boots on. You typically wear boots.

Andy: But I do have toes in there. OK.

Jay: All right. So question for you. OK. Last podcast, we talked more from a seller side. This time, I want to talk about from a buyer side. OK. So my question to you is, if you're thinking about buying a home, how quickly do you think you should, you know, if you're in the market, you know, what are you thinking if a house hits the market? What are the first things that you probably need to do if you're thinking about buying?

Andy: If I'm thinking about buying and seriously, I want to go and I look at it. Obviously, I want to set up a tour. I want to go take a look if it looks like the house that I want. And then I want to talk to somebody in finance to see if I can afford that house.

Jay: OK. So let me ask you when your first one, you want to tour it. You know, we see what's going on, you know, in the market. And again, we've talked about everything's different everywhere. So if you see that a house is coming on the market, it comes on the market today. OK. And they're having an open house on Sunday. Do you think, you know, when do you think you want to see it? You're going to wait to the open house or you're going to think it's a week. Do you think you need to see it right away? What is your what is your time frame in your mind when you think you probably should go look at it?

Andy: Just right off the top of my head, my first of what I would genuinely and this sounds like I'm sucking up, but I would reach out to somebody who knows more about real estate than I do you and say, this house looks like exactly what I need. I think we want to go tour it. What do you think of this house? I would probably want to do it after the open house, though.

Jay: OK, OK. And that's this is really why I wanted to. Well, one, I do know that you probably would call me because you call me about other stuff.

Andy: I absolutely do.

Jay: Which is perfect. But what I'm trying to get into is the typical buyer that's out there and what what we're seeing. So I want to talk about some of the pitfalls we've seen for buyers that were coming in to look at our listings and some buyers that we've worked with that didn't do things in the time frame or the order that it needed to be done. And they lost out. So this is why I sort of wanted to get an idea, like just in general, you know, what you were thinking, because you and I talk about this stuff.

Andy: And and we are basically about to be in the market to buy a home. So this is stuff that I need to know.

Jay: Yeah. So first thing is, you know, your buyer, buyers, if you're out there listening, you want to be prepared. But what does prepared mean? So you mentioned you're looking online. First thing I tell people is we want to get you talking to the lender to get your finances in order. We need to figure out if you own a home, do you have to sell that home? We have to figure out is your credit score where it needs to be? Or if you have a certain credit score, are you going to only be able to qualify for a FHA mortgage, which means you're going to have a mortgage insurance, which is going to increase your mortgage payment? Or are there things that you can do to try to benefit that? So you want to have all your financial parts in order beforehand, because if you find something, let's say that that was one you liked and you wanted to pull the trigger and, you know, you went out there but you didn't have anything worked out with a lender, you would be at a disadvantage, right?

Andy: You'd be waiting.

Jay: So one of the other things, again, finances in order. The next thing is the open house. And we had this happening this past weekend. We had a house that we put on the market in Smithsburg. It was our house of the week.

Andy: Sure. Yeah.

Jay: So we went on the market Friday. We had an open house on Sunday. We had over between the open house and the showings, close to 60 people, 60 different groups through that house in three days.

Andy: That's impressive.

Jay: So we had some people though that were, they didn't want to bother their agent. They're like, I'll just go see it at the open house. And we had others that said they just were going to wait until after the open house because they wanted to have a private tour and they didn't, for some reason, schedule it beforehand. So that property specifically, and again, it's not all properties, that one, we had nine offers that came in. We had nine offers by Sunday.

Andy: Wow.

Jay: And it was gone before Monday happened.

Andy: You wait and see, that's what crossed my mind. It's like, I want to do it apart from the open house. I want a private tour.

Jay: Yes. And we had others that the agents just sent their buyers to it. And I mean, our open house was one to three. The seller decided they were setting a deadline for 7:30 at night on Sunday because they work a normal job on Monday and they didn't think that it was fair to have everybody waiting Monday for them to get off work to be able to figure things out. So they wanted to knock it out before they went to work on Monday.

Andy: Makes sense.

Jay: So there were people that were at the open house at 2:30 that their agent never saw the house and they were all excited and wanted to write. And you know, they were like, well, the deadline is today. Yeah, the deadline's today. So you never know. And then there are times where let's say that you're dealing with, you know, and again, this is no, no negative to who you use for finance and you can use whatever you want. But a lot of people do tend to say, you know, I'm going to work with my bank. My bank knows me. They've got on and I get it. They have your finances. They have your bank statements. They know what's going on. But let's say that your lender at your bank only works Monday through Friday.

Andy: You're at a disadvantage.

Jay: If you wanted to write that weekend and needed a pre approval letter and you didn't have it, you lost that house.

Andy: That's right. You missed out.

Jay: You missed out. So, you know, the big thing is, you know, don't wait until the open house to go see it. Don't wait until after the open house to go see it. If there's something that really catches your eye, don't drag your feet. And I'm the so I will tell you, when looking at cars, I typically go and look, I look a lot on Sundays. But then if I want to go see them, I'll go. I mean, look online. If if I want to see them, I'll go out on Sunday when I know they're closed. Right. Because I hate salespeople.

Andy: And I'm a salesperson. You're a salesperson, right?

Jay: So I don't like the pushiness. It drives me absolutely insane. I do not like it at all. And this is the hardest part in the real estate world because we tell our clients, I'm not I will not push you to do something that you're not comfortable with. But I'm going to tell you, if something really does catch your eye, if you drag your feet, it could hurt you. Right. Not always, but it could. And, you know, you need to be comfortable. I'm not going I'm I'm not going to say you need to write right now. But, you know, if you wait till tomorrow and it's gone and this these things happen, you have to look at yourself because I'm going to say if this checks all your boxes, are you ready to do something? And and I tell people, I'm not pushing you, but I just need to make sure, because this might check somebody else, all the boxes for somebody else. Right. And we're going to talk about situations. I'm going to give you one specifically with a buyer client of ours. So she's looking in a specific area in Silver Spring. And there's it's I might as well talk about it's Leisure World over in Silver Spring, 55 and up. There's a mix. You know, there's high rise, there's mid-rise, there's all types of product over there for sale, all types of homes, tons of inventory, absolutely tons of it. So, you know, we've been showing her some things. She went out and she saw one. Isabella, my team was the showing partner, so she showed it to her and she told me, oh, my God, she loved it. So I called her and I said, hey, this is a great property. I heard you love it. It checked all the boxes. Are you ready to do something? She goes, well, I'm not really ready to do something right now. A day and a half later, she calls me and says, hey, can you see if there's any you know, I think I want to write on that house. It was gone already. It was gone. And her mindset was, though, there's so many homes on the market over there. A lot of them have been on the market for forty five plus days. This had only been on for three days. I have plenty of time because the average time over there is slow. So I'm going to take my time and think about it. And sometimes you can't do that.

Andy: Well, you take it for granted.

Jay: Yeah. And it's not that us as agents are trying to force you to do something quickly. It's just you never know. And I mean, we can talk in generalities like, OK, the average days on market in this neighborhood is X. The average of this is that. But there could be somebody else that that one property that checked all your boxes, checked all theirs, and they're ready to pull the trigger faster.

Andy: Chances are, if you love it, somebody else probably probably loves it, too.

Jay: Yeah. And that sounds like a cheesy sales line, you know, but it is like I said, I'm seeing this real time right now. And we had another buyer client talk about this one. There had been a home that been on the market for a while. He saw it, didn't have the finances together, had a preapproval, but, you know, it was going to be contingent. Then he wanted to not be contingent. All these different factors came into play. So, you know, the house had been on the market thirty five, forty days. He's interested trying to figure stuff out. All of a sudden, after forty some days, an offer comes in. So just because something's been sitting doesn't mean that an offer is not going to come in. You're going to have to be able to act quickly no matter what. Right. So even for properties that appear to be stale or have not been picked up quickly, it does not mean that they're not going to go. They're not going to have somebody else come through because, again, we always tell people, well, I tell people on the selling side, there's always someone that's out there because people say, when is a good time? When is a bad time to sell? Well, sometimes it's luck. It's having that person that needs what you have at that set time. They had a job opportunity. Let's talk about your situation and let's say you were going to buy when you came here. You had no idea you were going to be coming and working in Frederick?

Andy: No, did not.

Jay: But guess what? Life happens. You got a job offer. And let's say at that time you wanted to buy something here. You would have not known. And let's say there was a house that was on the market for sixty two days. You weren't in the market. You are coming here. You say, Jay, I want to see some houses. Here's my budget. And I take you and one of those houses is one that's been on the market for sixty two days. And you're like, man, this is awesome.

Andy: Right.

Jay: New buyers hit the market every day.

Andy: Sure.

Jay: So just because a property has been sitting there, that right buyer might not have been ready. That right buyer might have needed to sell their home. And now it's settled. That right buyer unfortunately had a situation come up where they were getting divorced. There was a death in the family. There was a family member who got really sick and they couldn't deal with stairs. So they had to go to one level living. All of these things are real life situations. So to me, I mean, the biggest thing that I really wanted to talk about is you have to be prepared. And, you know, from an agent perspective and from a salesperson perspective, realize, you know, and again, some salespeople will be pushy, but it's all up to you. You have to be ready to make that decision. And let's say that I would have shown you that house and you fell in love with it, like my one client, and you thought you had time because it was the time. She has been so upset that she missed that. And she goes, you asked me if I wanted to write and I told you, I'm not, I want to think about it. And then I kept thinking about it. I couldn't get it out of my mind. And then it was gone. And, you know, and she's like, I wish you would have told me I had to do it. I'm like, I can't tell you, you have to do something. You have to want to do it yourself. And this goes for everything in life. As you and I talk about kids and everything else, and they have to want it. I can't make you do something. And it's not my job to tell you, you have to do something. I want you to feel warm and fuzzy about it. Just like we tell a seller, if they get an offer and they don't love the terms, we're like, we don't want you to kick yourself in the butt that you didn't take this later. But we also don't want you to be upset that you feel like you settled for something that wasn't the type of offer that you were comfortable with.

Andy: Because this is not something you want to settle on, something you're going to spend 30 plus years in.

Jay: Correct. Correct. And it's a big amount of money that you're spending, right? So, you know, and again, we were just talking before the podcast, you know, I got my degree in psychology, behavioral psychology. You know, there's all types of psychology things that we could use to try to manipulate or convince people to do things. That's not, I don't believe in doing any of that. It's really just trying to tell your people, figure out what you're really looking for, get your finances together. And honestly, if something does check all the boxes, or it gives you that good home feeling, don't be afraid to pull the trigger. I don't, I mean, and it's funny, we've had people that are like, we've taken out one time, and they saw three houses, and one of them was perfect. They're like, I've had friends that were looking for six months, I feel like maybe I'm missing something like, how did I get this right? I said, Well, one, we have a different process, we actually go through all of the things that you want, we have a really detailed process, because we want you to, especially if you got a couple, you know, we make we have like this little assignment, we have them do of, you know, their wants and needs, we have them do it separately, then we have what I call the marriage counseling session where we sit down. And then we on the one that shares with each of them what their wants and needs are, and we talk through it. And then we create that ultimate checklist of this is what is a must, this is what we cannot break off of, right? Like, you know, we need four bedrooms all on the same level, because we have little kids, we don't want one of those bedrooms in the basement, right? And that's what we stick with. And again, you can veer off of it. But we're going to go back to that main checklist and say, Okay, so you have four kids, and they're all under the age of seven. This house, it has two of the two of the bedrooms are on the upper level two are in the basement. Are you cool with the kids being in the basement? No. Okay. So do you really want to go see it? Well, I guess not. Okay, great. Then we don't need to worry about seeing it.

Andy: Sure.

Jay: Or, you know, I need to have this, I need to have that. This is where you need to have your act together, and you need to know what you want. So again, hopefully, this was a good podcast, I really, I'm really trying to take advantage of talking about things that we're really seeing real time. And again, in general, we talk about, you know, here's roughly what, again, I can say, here's the average days on market, here's how quickly things are selling here. But perfect example is that Leisure World, there was tons of stuff on the market, tons. Average days on market, if you took it all in, was over, it was close to two months.

Andy: Wow.

Jay: And the one sold in two days.

Andy: Yeah. I mean, just because the averages are there, it could fall on the short end of that average, or the long.

Jay: And like I said, that buyer could have been looking forever and now found it, or that buyer, like a situation we talked about with you, you got a job relocation and you weren't in the market before and now you are. And you went and saw it and it caught your eye.

Andy: Day 60 for you might be day one for me. That's it.

Jay: That's it. So that's, you know, and like I said, you know, if you're enjoying this podcast, we're going to do a little more fun stuff like this.

Andy: All right. I'm looking forward to it.

Jay: I really enjoy talking about really what we're seeing. So and putting it in perspective.

Andy: Sure.

Jay: You know, if you're house hunting and some of the stuff we're saying is probably going to resonate with you, like, oh, man, that happened or, you know, I'm thinking about doing this. Wow. I never thought about it from that perspective.

Andy: Sure.

Jay: So it's important. Again, we talk about real life situations and, you know, we're here to answer any questions. But, you know, let's get into the House of the Week.

Andy: Yeah, let's do it. This may be the home that you fall in love with.

Jay: Yes. 1921 Fauna Drive in Frederick listed for four hundred and fifty five thousand. It's a town home built in twenty twenty two. Now, interesting part is as we look at all these new town home developments, a lot of them have these rear load garages, which means you don't have a yard, right?

Andy: Right.

Jay: This one has a two car front load garage. So you do have a nice yard for those of you that want a yard. Three finish levels. There are three bedrooms on the upper level and the lower level. There is egress. So it could be a rec room. It could be an office or it could be a fourth bedroom for you.

Andy: Sure.

Jay: Currently, the seller has it set up as a fourth bedroom and it has its own private bathroom as well. So the home has to the home has three full baths, one half bath. The lower level is finished. I talked about that. It could be a bedroom or rec room, an office. There's a walk out to a fenced rear yard. So if you have any four legged friends, it's perfect. You can let the dog out to go do their business. You don't have to worry about it. The main level is an open concept with living room, kitchen, dining and a half bath. There's gas cooking. For those of you, there's some people that are like, I will never go back to electric cooking once they once they have gas.

Andy: Right.

Jay: There's a large island with breakfast bar, granite counters, stainless steel appliances. Sliding glass door off of the dining area leading to a deck. The upper level has three bedrooms, two full baths and a laundry room. The primary suite is a walk in closet and updated full bath with dual sinks and dual mirrors. A large shower with custom glass doors. Again, just a really cool house and not it's newer, but it's not the cookie cutter. They've done some additional things in there that make it look a little different. If you want to check this home out, go to WFRE.com. Look at our House of the Week. If you like what you see, you can click on a button to schedule a tour. You can give us a call directly and we'll get you in. Or if you have an agent, call your agent. They can get you in and show you this home at any time.

Andy: And get your act together now.

Jay: Yes, yes, yes.

Andy: I'm Andy Webb.

Jay: I'm Jay Day.

Andy: And this is Real Talk Real Estate.