Buy Your First Home!: Finding the Right House, Surviving the Mortgage Process, Avoiding The...

This book is directed toward first time home buyers. It was a very good guide for me when I was looking to purchase a home. It explains all the steps in easy to understand terms, and explains all the terminolgy very well. After reading this book you will know what you must do to prepare for your home purchase. You will know what to look for in an agent, you will know what to expect when you talk to a lender. The process will no longer be intimidating. Definately worth the little money you pay for the book.

I bought this book along with "The 106 Common Mistakes Homebuyers Make ( & How to Avoid Them)" (Gary W. Eldred, Ph.D.) and enjoyed both. Irwin's book neatly describes the complete homebuying process and is extremely easy to read. Included in the book are several checklists that I found useful, and discussions on financing options, home remodeling considerations, and tax impacts that owning a home will create. I read the book in a couple days' time and often referred back to it as I was going through the homebuying process; I'm sure you will, too.

I read few books when shopping for a new home and of all the books I read I found this one to be most useful. This books talks about everything that a 1st time home buyer needs to know. Maybe it could have been more detailed but when you are buying a home and you are a first time buyer, you are under lot of tension and you do not have time to go thru bulky home buying books. In fact I used to carry this book around as reference when I was shopping for a new home to lookup terms the agents/lender were talking about. I would recommend this book to any 1st time home buyer or atleast read this before jumping into more detailed books.

I'm buying my first home, unfortunately in the ultra-expensive Bay Area. I read a few of the Dummies books, which were adequate, and then came across this book. Irwin's book is a fairly easy read - you can skim the parts you already know (i.e. if you're not buying a fixer-uper, skip that part), and concentrate on what you don't know. He doesn't go very far in depth into any one subject - the book is only 180 pages - but he gives a layman's explanation of almost every part of the home buying process, from offers, to financing, to inspections, to repairs. And I don't think you need anything more in depth than this to buy a home. I actually read this book half-way through my own home buying process, and I still found it very valuable and useful. I can't claim that it saved me any money - it didn't. But it did reassure me that what I was doing was right - and that is well worth the cost of the book.

It was soooo helpful! We had been renting and this showed us how to move up to ownership. The best part is that it's so well-written and easy to understand. It showed us exactly what steps to take to get the down payment and financing and then how to decide on the right home (a condo). We followed the steps... and they worked. If this is your first time at real estate, you'll like this.