Buy real estate
A real estate purchase is an important act, which can become the project of a lifetime. For this reason, it should not be taken lightly, especially as the obstacles and constraints are numerous. This part of our Practical Guide to Mortgage Loan is therefore intended to help you make the right decisions in the context of the purchase of real estate.
Best practices for finding a property to buy
There is no secret: to find the ideal property with a view to a real estate purchase, you need to have as much time as possible. Unless you have an unlimited budget and only visit exceptional properties, you are going to have to spend many hours looking, visiting, checking, questioning and thinking. And this rule is the same whether it is the purchase of new or old real estate, bare or furnished, a house or an apartment, a main or secondary residence, in the context of ” a first-time home or rental investment.
You generally have 2 solutions to find a property to buy: carry out the procedures yourself or entrust this task to a professional.
The individual search for a property for a real estate purchase is made very simple thanks to the development of digital tools. Thus, you can access announcements:
On professional real estate portals (seloger.com, logic-immo.com, etc.: these ads are posted by real estate agencies);
On the websites of real estate agencies;
On personal-to-private advertising platforms (pap.fr, leboncoin.fr);
In local newspapers, in print or digital version, which always offer real estate purchase announcements.
As soon as you have found what you are looking for, you can contact the agency or deal from person to person. However, you must have as much time as possible, because browsing the ads on the different platforms and choosing yourself which properties to visit are particularly time-consuming operations.
Entrust your research to a professional
You can choose to save a lot of time by entrusting your search to a real estate professional: agent employed by a real estate agency, independent agent, intermediary, even real estate hunter / property hunter (a booming profession that we mainly encountered in large cities, and which differs from the classic real estate agent by the fact that he holds a mandate on behalf of the sole buyer, see here ).
The professional will simplify your research phase, then your steps for a real estate purchase. You send him your conditions (type of accommodation, surface area, amenities, geographical preference, etc.) and your budget, he is responsible for submitting goods to you that meet these specifications. You only visit the most relevant properties, selected after a drastic selection. The agent then takes care of the administrative formalities relating to the transaction. In return, it will be necessary to pay him a commission, which can vary between 3 and 10% of the total price of the real estate purchase.
However, there are alternative solutions, such as real estate auctions. Two versions are possible:
Notarial auctions, chosen in particular by sellers who wish to find a buyer as quickly as possible;
Online auctions, which borrow a major part of its process from traditional sales, except that offers to purchase real estate are subject to the principle of auctions.
Auctions make it possible to acquire real estate at attractive prices, often far below the market. However, this solution does not exempt you from carrying out the essential preliminary steps: visiting the available goods, going through the documentation, studying the market prices in order to formulate a coherent offer.
