FREE Home Buying Readiness Quiz

The questions

Twelve quick questions about your financing, your timing and what you are actually looking for. Your full answer appears right here on the page the moment you finish. It tells you whether to go and look now, sort the money out first, or wait.

1. Where are you looking?
2. Where are you with financing?
   A pre-approval is a lender’s written answer, not the two-minute estimate on a website.
3. Is the money for a deposit and closing costs available now?
   Available means in an account you can reach, not on the way.
4. When do you need to be in?
5. Do you have a house to sell first?
6. Do you know roughly where your credit stands?
7. What kind of home?
8. Do you know the size you need?
9. Is there somewhere you want to be near?
   A job, a school, a church, family, a park — somewhere you have chosen. Distance to a place you name is something we can measure.
10. Do you know your one non-negotiable?
    The thing you would walk away over — a garage, one storey, a fenced yard, a workshop.
11. Have you been inside anything yet?
12. Is anyone representing you yet?

What it can tell you

Every answer this check gives, in full — one of them is yours once you have answered. Nothing here is held back for a sign-up.

1. Sort the money first — it is the fastest thing you can do

   You may well know what you want, but an offer needs a lender behind it, and in a market where anything good gets more than one offer, a pre-approval is the difference between being considered and not. A written pre-approval is usually days, not weeks, and it costs nothing. Do that, then come back to this.

2. Ready to look — and worth narrowing it down

   The purchase can happen. What is missing is the shape of what you are after, and the cheapest way to find that out is to walk through a few. Describe what you want in your own words and a person will come back with real listings — including ones that never reach the portals.

3. Ready to write an offer

   Financing, timing and a clear idea of what you are looking for — that is the combination that gets a house. From here it is about seeing the right ones quickly, and about somebody reading the contract who does this weekly.