Buying a home is one of the most significant purchases someone will make. Despite being a ubiquitous process for many people and their families, many locals still don't know how to take the first steps toward purchasing a home.
Here are the main steps to buying a home in Trinidad and Tobago:
1. Assess Your Finances
Before you begin your search you first need to figure out what you can afford. This includes evaluating your debt to income ratio, assessing your monthly expenses, finding out what additional cost you can incur and considering how much you can afford on the down payment.
Learn more about estimating these costs on our recent blog about calculating how much you can afford on a house in Trinidad and Tobago.
2. Mortgage Options
Once you have a clear understanding of your financial position you will then want to evaluate what your mortgage options are. This includes going to a lender, finding out how much you are eligible for, and going through the prequalification, and preapproval process.
Pre-qualification will tell you if you qualify for the loan and how much you can borrow and the pre-approval process will give you a precise number for how much you can borrow and your interest rate.
This is a vital step before your search as it will help you narrow down your options and view homes that are within your price range.
3. Search and Select
Now to the fun part: looking for your home! You must find a real estate agent you trust who understands what you are looking for. Many people start their home search journey thinking they can manage it on their own by scrolling through postings on social media. This is part of the process, however, you would soon realize what a gruelling task it can be.
A real estate agent will be able to find you a larger variety of selections within your price range, negotiate for you, and handle the paperwork when making an offer.
That leads us to our next point...
4. Making an offer
Once you have decided on the house and made an offer of purchase you will then have to prepare certain legal documents and make certain down payments, in Trinidad and Tobago, some of these documents will include:
- An Agreement of Sale- which is often done by your real estate agent or an attorney at law and dictates the parameters around the purchase.
- A Certificate of Title
- Property Inspection
- Value Appraisal
Once these documents have been submitted to the relevant parties and have been approved, the lender will then issue the money to the seller. You will then be in the final stage of purchasing your home.
5. Closing
The final stages include finalising all the relevant paperwork most notably the Agreement of Sale, obtaining your loan and getting the keys to your home.
Both parties must sign the Deed/Memorandum of Transfer and then have the Transfer of Deed and Certificate of Title submitted to the Land Registry Department which will prepare a Return of Ownership.
These are the primary documents at closing but you also need to consider your closing costs to your mortgage lender, real estate agent and attorney. Closing costs can vary but you must consider these costs early on as they can be higher than you expect.
Here are some other resources to consider on your step by step journey and their links:
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