Buying
Buying a home in Seattle
Eight steps from first question to keys, and what each one actually decides. Starting with the one most buyer guides skip.
Most buying guides start at step three, once you have already decided to hire someone. This one starts where the search data says buyers actually start — wondering whether they need an agent at all.
The sequence
The first three happen before you tour anything, and they decide more than the rest combined.
- Decide whether you want representation at allWorth settling before anything else, and worth settling honestly. Washington does not require you to have a broker. What changes without one is a specific list of jobs, not a vague loss of support.
- Lock one lender before you tour anythingShop hard for two weeks, then commit. Changing lenders mid-search does not get you a better rate; it gets you a slower offer, and slow offers lose houses. Ask directly whether you are pre-approved or fully underwritten — they are not the same, and only one of them makes a seller confident.
- Work out what you actually bring to closingThe down payment is not the whole number, and the loan minimum is not the down payment. Assistance programs stack in ways most buyers never hear about.
- Rank your must-haves as permanent or fixableLayout, finishes and appliances are fixable. The street, the lot, the light and the commute are not. Buyers who sort this before touring decide in days; buyers who do not decline a house in week two over a dishwasher.
- Tour with the checks in mindStand in the back yard at 8am and again at 6pm. Ask for the seller's pre-inspection on every home. Check the bedroom count against county records rather than the listing.
- Write an offer built on price and certaintyPrice does most of the work. After that it is financing certainty and speed of close — not a letter about how much you love the house.
- Use the inspection as a negotiation, not a scareAsk for genuinely broken things. Take dated things off the price instead. Sellers distinguish sharply between a repair and an upgrade, and asking them to fund an upgrade reads as asking for the discount and the renovation.
- Run the calendar to closingEarnest money, inspection response, title review, financing, walkthrough. Every one has a deadline and nobody sends a reminder.
Worth reading first
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