What country are you in? It might matter.

Assuming you are in the US, the process is lengthy and there’s a lot of hurry up and wait, but it’s not too bad.

• First you save up your down payment which can be as low as 3% of the purchase price (or even lower for some people, many vets pay 0% down). 20% or higher will get you a lower payment because you don’t have to buy insurance for the bank and may get you better rates.
• Next pick a lender either by manually calling around to a bunch of banks and seeing what they offer or by going through a mortgage broker who gets paid by the bank for bringing them business. When you have picked your bank you want to get pre-approval for the amount of money you wish to borrow.
• Contact a real estate agent who works for buyers. Recommendations from friends and family help a lot here. Broadly you want somebody with a lot of experience who helps a lot of people buy homes. You generally don’t want your cousin’s friend’s barber who’s starting up real estate as a side gig.
• Your real estate agent helps guide you through the local market practices. You tour houses and if you find one you like your real estate agent helps put in the offer which will likely include a payment of earnest money which you will lose if you pull out of the contract.
• If the offer is accepted you and your agent negotiate the purchase agreement with the seller including any contingencies such as passing a home inspection.
• You sign a bunch of papers with the bank, nowadays probably on a website. The title company does their work including writing a title insurance policy. This stage takes about a month.
• When everything is already you will sign the final papers and get the keys.
• After a month or two your bank will inevitably package your mortgage into a bond which is sold to one of the hilariously evil and predatory mortgage-backed security companies that are still doing the same shit they were when they ruined the world economy 15 years ago.
• Budget roughly 1-3% of the home’s value in savings per year to pay for maintenance and repairs.

Edit, addendum: hire your own lawyer to review the contracts. This will cost about $1,000. If you don’t already have a lawyer you can contact your state bar association to find one that is relevant to your needs. Don’t buy a home as co-owner with a person to whom you are not married. If you must, you will need your lawyer again to draft up a full partnership agreement that describes how to divide the asset in the event of death, disinterest, disability, disloyalty, etc. You don’t want to be half owner of a house with your deceased girlfriend’s parents who want to sell it out from under you. Pick a number as your budget and stick to it. The temptation to get a house that is a little bit nicer will always be there. This is how stupid decisions are made.

Never trust anyone that your realtor recommends. They are more likely to ignore problems in order to push the deal through. Don’t trust your realtor, they are more likely to push you into a quick closing so they can get paid sooner. If they’re getting 3% of the sale then they don’t want you to negotiate that much. $10k off the sale means they lost $300.

Hire an attorney, even if your state doesn’t require one. Have them look over everything to make sure it’s good.

Like another commentor stated, if the inspection comes back with issues ask for a credit at closing. Don’t let the seller “fix” them. They will hire their cousins buddy to do a hackjob for cheap.

Another word of advice. Do not close until the property is vacant.

Never do a rent back. That’s where you close but rent the house back to the seller for a short amount of time. If they aren’t ready to move, don’t close unless you want to risk them having to stay indefinitely.

As close to the closing as possible do a walkthrough. If they still have boxes in the garage that they “will be back for” don’t close. They need to have the property empty and ready to move into when you close.

Make sure you have homeowners insurance when you close. I’ve seen stories where some jilted third party destroyed the place during closing.

This is a really specific thing, but GET A SEWER INSPECTION, and the sewer insurance on your homeowner’s insurance! Sewer inspections apparently aren’t a standard part of home inspections, and two of my friends bought a house recently — both had junk sewer lines that needed replacing, and one got the previous owner to pay for fixing it after it was found to have a crack, and the other friend didn’t, and had to shell out something like $10k for it just a year into living there because they didn’t have insurance for it.

This applies especially to old buildings.

If you’re U.S. based, check out your state’s HUD (Housing and Urban Development) site, they’re likely to have guides and resources for first time home buyers as well as any state programs that are there to assist that process. If you’re looking to move states, check the target state’s information out as well as there are probably differences in how their programs are administered.

We also spoke to an advisor at our credit union when we were looking to buy our home. Your financial institution likely has someone in this kind of role as well, but the level of quality can vary widely from person to person as well as between institutions and fiduciary advice isn’t guaranteed.

congrats on starting the process! i bought a house in the US in january (with my partner, unmarried), so this is still pretty fresh. in addition to @MariaTacobellina@beehaw.org’s excellent advice:

• the first year is expensive. you’ll find out you want new/different furniture for the house. you’ll find out it needs repairs you didn’t see. you’ll find out you need a tree removed because it’s endangering the house. you’ll find out every third lightbulb is out. i knew this would happen, but i didn’t realize just how expensive it would be, and i wish i would have budgeted a bit more in that category!
• make sure your home inspector goes through every little detail of the house. get estimates on any work that needs to be done, and see if the seller will offer you an allowance for that (usually this comes off the sale price of the house). our house sale price was taken down by $10k for foundation issues alone. they also took the price down for the floors (they were wrecked) and the back deck repairs.
• negotiate the price down for every little thing.
• if you can, try to do lots of things yourself. our yard was a mess, so we spent many weekends working on cleaning it up to be more pleasant. my partner redid the plumbing in our crawlspace because it was a mess. we painted the interior of the garage ourselves. my partner redid the electrical work in the garage as well. you’ll learn a lot, and you’ll probably mess up here and there, but i find it much more rewarding to do it ourselves. not only that, but you’ll save money and be sure that the quality is up to your standards.
• try to see the house as what it could be, not what it is right now. if you can do that, you’ll have a lot more options. we got a good deal on our house because lots of folks could only see the bad things.

(Assuming US) This article explains the steps pretty clearly, without getting too into the weeds. Some steps like pre-approval and finding a realtor can happen at the same time: https://www.nerdwallet.com/article/mortgages/home-buying-checklist-steps-to-buying-house

Check Google for a first time homebuyer class in your area, they can walk you through a lot and I think some types of loans require them.

One of the important things right now and until you close on a house, is keep your finances in tip too shape. No new debt or financial changes. There will also be a ton of questions about your financial situation so make sure you have access to bank statements, pay stubs, tax returns.

Different types of home loans have different qualification factors, requirements, and property types that can use it so it’s worth figuring out what sort of property you are looking for (realtor could be useful). One thing that isn’t mentioned in that article are USDA home loans, and I’m sure there are other special types too. Many areas also have first time homebuyer programs with lower rates or other incentives.

Final edit_finalfinalV2: After you move in change your locks. You never know who else has a key. Costs me ~$10 per lock if I bring them to the locksmith shop.

The only thing I’d like to add that hasn’t already been mentioned is that depending on how hot the real estate market is in your area, realtors may push the idea of you waiving contingencies when making offers. There are some contingencies that are safer to waive in some cases, like the appraisal contingency (if you’re sure the home will appraise for the amount of the loan at a bare minimum). However, do not waive inspections. If you have the option to pay a little more up front to do more detailed inspections, you should do so. You might end up out a few hundred bucks, but that’s better than tens or hundreds of thousands if you get a house that needs surprise sewer or foundational work.

Lot of other good advice. I will just add a few things. Buy only what you need. Houses you plan to live in are cost centers not investments. Get your financing in line first. Lot of people loose houses because their financing is not ready. It helps to get to know the area youself and go to a few open houses and drive and walk around to decide what you want in a general sense.

We actually were formally looking with a realtor 3 days when we put the offer down. That worked because we did our leg work up front and had our financing in place. In fact I found the house during one of my walks before it actually posted.

I’m no expert, but I’ve bought and sold two houses in my life. Just finished selling one (and buying it not long before that; long story), so the process is somewhat fresh in my mind.

A counterpoint to @SkepticElliptic@beehaw.org’s advice: find a realtor you really trust and then just let them handle everything. Do whatever they tell you to do. Maybe you pay another $10-20k than if you had absolutely optimized everything, but who cares? More likely than not, in trying to figure everything out yourself, you’d screw up something and end up losing way more than that, not to mention your well-being.

I met my last realtor in a Toastmasters group. Fantastic guy. I asked him about everything. I still reasoned about things myself and ultimately made the decisions myself, but it was incredibly reassuring to have his expertise to lean on. I never once got a sense he was working for the highest commission he could get. No decent realtor is going to risk pissing you off and having you tell your friends bad things about them for another $300 commission on top of the $8-15k they’re going to make regardless. It’s not even worth fighting about it for $300 when they could just get the deal done, lose $300 in potential commissions, and move on to the next deal.

Are there bad realtors? Yes. My advice on that is just not to hire one of them (or fire them if you accidentally do) 😉, but the idea that you’re going to be able to cross all your 't’s and dot your 'i’s (or even figure out enough to know where the 't’s and 'i’s are) doing it yourself on your first go-round sounds like a bit of a long-shot to me.

Oh, and @wheeville@beehaw.org’s advice to start by getting pre-approved is solid. Your realtor will probably want you to do this anyway before you start looking, so you’ll be ahead of the game.

Don’t trust online mortgage brokers like Nesto, they will lie and try to cheat you. Find someone local with a good reputation

For researching a new city and figuring out which neighborhoods I want to target I use a few different tools. This is my favorite though: https://www.city-data.com/

I started by talking to my bank (a credit union) to get pre-qualified. I recommend it as a first step. They will tell you how much you are qualified to borrow, which is not necessarily what you can afford or would be comfortable with. Keep in mind insurance and taxes will be needed along with the monthly mortgage payment. My credit union had a first time homebuyers program which was a huge help. I can share more details about that if you’re interested. Plenty of old timer agents will jump at the opportunity to take advantage of a first time homebuyer.

Once you are pre qualified, find a real estate agent. They will help you with the rest. Do your research and be skeptical of the big local firms. I found an agent who worked in my town occasionally, but wasn’t part of the local political circlejerk (it’s small city in the south but I’m sure this is an issue everywhere).