How I Help You Buy

Most agents start by showing houses. I start by getting you ready to win one.

That sounds like a small difference and it is the whole thing. The house people lose is almost always the one they were not ready to write on. They found it in week two, before the pre-approval was finished, before they knew what their budget actually bought here, and by the time they were ready it was gone.

So the process runs in four stages, in this order, and the houses come third.

• Ready. Financing sorted and representation agreed before we tour anything.
• Educated. An honest look at what your budget actually buys in this market, before you fall in love with something outside it.
• Aligned. A search built on how you actually live, not on every listing that matches a price filter.
• Locked. Offer strategy, negotiation, inspection and closing, run so that the ending is boring.

What you walk away with is a home you chose deliberately, bought at a number you can defend, with nothing discovered late.

This is the stage that saves people months, and it is the one most often skipped.

Ahwatukee is not one market. Lakewood, Foothills Club West and Foothills Reserve share a zip code and are genuinely different places to buy, with different housing and different trade-offs. Custom Estates and Upper Canyon are different again. A single budget can look generous in one and thin in the next.

So before we tour, I show you what your number really reaches in each of the areas you are considering, using homes that have actually sold rather than homes that are listed hopefully. If what you want and what you can spend do not currently meet, I would far rather tell you that in the first conversation than let you find out across eleven Saturdays of viewings.

Sometimes the answer is to adjust the area. Sometimes it is to adjust the house. Sometimes it is to wait a few months, and I will say so even though waiting is not in my interest. You are going to live with this decision for years and I would rather be honest early than agreeable now.

Read the areas before we talk if you like. It makes the first conversation much better.

The offer. Price is the number everyone watches and it is rarely the whole story. Financing type, inspection terms, appraisal handling, close timing and what you ask the seller to cover all change how your offer reads on the other side of the table. I will tell you what comparable homes actually sold for, what I think this one is worth, and where I would push against where I would hold. Then the decision is yours and I execute it properly.

The seller's disclosure statement. Arizona sellers complete an SPDS, a written statement of what they know about the property. It has to reach you within three days of the contract being accepted. If something on it concerns you, you have the Inspection Period, or five days from when the SPDS actually arrived, whichever gives you longer. So if a seller is slow getting it to you, your window does not quietly shrink. In the normal case it lands inside the Inspection Period and the two run together.

Earnest money. When your offer is accepted you put down a deposit showing you are serious. It goes to the escrow company, not to me and not to my brokerage, and it is credited toward what you owe at closing, so it is not an extra cost. The amount is agreed between you and the seller as part of the offer.

Everyone asks when it stops being refundable, and the honest answer is that it is not a date on the calendar. It is tied to your contingencies. While one is genuinely still live, your inspection, your appraisal, your loan, the disclosures, cancelling under it returns your deposit. Once those are satisfied, waived, or allowed to expire, walking away without cause is a different matter and the seller can claim the deposit.

Which is the real reason I am strict about dates. A missed deadline quietly turns a refundable deposit into one you have to argue about. And if you and the seller ever disagree over who gets it, escrow cannot simply hand it to either of you: they need both signatures or a court order. That is a slow, expensive road, and the way to stay off it is not to miss deadlines in the first place.

The Inspection Period. In Arizona this is normally ten days. Ten is the standard on the contract rather than something fixed by law, so it can be negotiated, and occasionally we do. The clock starts the day after your contract is accepted and runs to the end of the tenth day. Not ten business days, and not ten days from when you get round to booking someone.

They are calendar days, not business days. The day we go under contract does not count, so the clock starts the following day and ends at 11:59pm on the tenth.

That matters more than it sounds. Ten days is enough if you start immediately and genuinely tight if you do not, because a good inspector is often booked several days out and any specialist follow-up has to fit inside the same window. So I want the inspection booked as soon as we are under contract rather than at the end of it. A problem found early is a negotiation. The same problem found on day nine is a scramble.

What the Inspection Period is actually for. It is your window to investigate the home at your own expense and satisfy yourself about it: physical and environmental inspections, questions to the city or county, zoning and code checks, insurance availability, and anything else that matters to you. If something specific would change your mind about the house, this is when you look into it.

What happens at the end of it. If you want anything addressed, you give the seller one written notice listing everything you disapprove of, and you choose one of two paths. You can cancel outright, in which case your earnest money comes back to you. Or you can ask the seller to put things right, and they respond in writing within five days. If they decline, or say nothing at all, you get five days to walk away with your earnest money.

The part that catches people out: if you let the deadline pass without giving notice, you are treated as having accepted the home as it is. Not a warning, not an extension. And a conversation does not count. Only something signed by both sides moves these dates.

Everything after. Once you are under contract, my transaction coordinator and I manage the dates: inspection, appraisal, loan milestones and the final walkthrough. You get an update every week whether or not anything has happened, because silence is the part clients tell me they hated with previous agents.

Closing. Arizona closings run through an escrow and title company, and if you are coming from another state this is the part that feels unfamiliar.

There is no attorney conducting the closing here, and no table where everyone sits down together. An escrow officer, licensed by the state and neutral between you and the seller, holds the money, orders the title work, prepares the documents and handles recording. You are welcome to bring your own attorney and some people do, but nothing requires it. You will most likely never meet the seller: you sign at your appointment, they sign at theirs, and the two need not be the same day.

The one that catches people out: signing day is not closing day. In Arizona the sale closes when the deed is actually recorded at the county recorder's office. You sign, the money moves, then recording happens, usually the following day. So the keys are not yours the moment you put the pen down, and if the recorder's office is closed, closing moves to the next day both offices are open. I tell people this early because it changes when you book the movers.

If you are moving here from elsewhere, the relocation page covers what is different about doing this at a distance.

This describes my general process and is not legal, tax, or lending advice. Every transaction differs, and details vary by property and by circumstance.