The Westside Home Buying Guide

1. Before You Start Looking

It's tempting to start scrolling listings the moment you decide you might want to move. Go ahead — but there's one step worth doing first: get pre-approved, not just pre-qualified. A pre-approval tells you what a lender will actually commit to, which is different from an informal estimate, and it tells sellers you're a serious buyer the moment you find the right home.

Pre-approval also answers a question a lot of buyers skip past: what a lender says you qualify for and what you'll actually be comfortable spending every month are two different numbers. Taxes, insurance, HOA dues, and maintenance all add up on top of the mortgage payment. It's worth working through the full picture before you fall in love with a house at the top of your range.

2. Working With a Buyer's Agent

A good buyer's agent works for you, not the seller — but that distinction isn't always obvious, especially if you've talked with more than one agent or visited an open house without representation. Before we look at a single home together, I'll walk you through exactly who I represent, what that means for you, and how I'm compensated. No surprises, nothing buried in fine print.

From there, my job is to do the parts of this process you can't easily do yourself: pull real comparables instead of relying on a website estimate, flag issues in a home that aren't obvious on a first walkthrough, and negotiate on your behalf when it matters most.

3. What to Actually Look for at Showings

A lot of buyer advice stops at "check the closets and look at the light." On the Westside, where much of the housing stock is older and full of character, that's not enough. The things that matter most are usually the ones a photo can't show you:

• Drainage and grading — water pooling near the foundation is a much bigger deal than a dated kitchen.
• Roof and mechanical age — HVAC, water heater, and electrical panel age tell you what's coming, not just what's here now.
• Renovation quality — was that finished basement done with a permit, or is it a nice-looking shortcut?
• HOA rules and reserves — some Westside pockets have them, many don't; always verify dues, rules, and reserve funding before you assume.

I walk every showing with an eye toward these details, because the goal isn't just finding a home you like — it's making sure you know what you're actually buying.

4. Making an Offer

An offer isn't one number — it's a set of decisions about price, contingencies, deposit size, and timing, and each one shifts your risk in a different direction. Rather than treating this as a single high-stakes guess, I walk clients through it as a set of choices: a conservative approach that protects your capital, a balanced approach that competes while keeping key protections, and an aggressive approach for when winning the home matters more than anything else.

There's no universally right answer — the right offer depends on the home, the competition, and what you personally can't afford to lose. What matters is that you're choosing your level of risk deliberately, not guessing under pressure.

5. Under Contract: Inspection, Appraisal & Due Diligence

Once your offer is accepted, the clock starts on a series of deadlines — inspection, financing, appraisal — and this is the stage where buyers most often feel like they've been left in the dark. My approach is the opposite: you'll always know what's outstanding, who owns it, and what happens if something doesn't go as planned.

Your inspection report will likely be long. Most of it won't matter. I help sort findings into what's a safety issue, what affects financing, what's a near-term cost, and what's just routine maintenance — so a 50-page report turns into a short, clear conversation about what's actually worth negotiating.

If the appraisal comes in lower than the offer price, that's not the deal falling apart — it's a negotiation point, and there are a few standard ways to work through it depending on your contract terms.

6. Closing Day

Before closing, you'll need to bring together your cash to close — the down payment plus closing costs, typically a mix of loan fees, title insurance, prepaid taxes and insurance, and recording fees. I'll walk through your specific numbers well before closing day so nothing shows up as a surprise.

One more thing, because it matters: wire fraud targeting home closings is real and increasingly common. Scammers monitor real transactions and send convincing last-minute changes to wiring instructions. Before you ever wire money, we'll verbally verify every instruction using a phone number we already have on file — never one from a new or changed email.

7. After You Move In

My job doesn't end at closing. The first few weeks in a new home always come with a few surprises — a utility that needs transferring, a system you're not familiar with, a question that only comes up once you're actually living there. I'm a call away for all of it.