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"    1. Not Getting Qualified for a Mortgage First  Shopping for a home is a long, arduous process and an emotional rollercoaster. So don&amp;#039;t go too far down this road until you&amp;#039;re qualified for a mortgage. You can&amp;#039;t house shop for real until you know how much house you can afford. And there&amp;#039;s no point in getting attached to a home that&amp;#039;s out of your price range. 2. Buying With Your Heart\u2014Not Your Head  The biggest trap of all. A home is a huge investment of money, time, and labor. Consider every aspect of the purchase with a cold, hard eye. Be brutally honest with yourself. 3. Doing Due Diligence on the Neighborhood  You&amp;#039;ve investigated the school district in which your potential new home resides, looked up crime and other key statistics, and even strolled through the neighborhood, stopping to talk with people walking their dogs or working in the yard. But as we noted recently, the strange and unusual quirks of a neighborhood wait to bite an unsuspecting homebuyer. Put in the time to find out whether the area suffers from excess highway noise or has industrial equipment such as water-tower pumps nearby. 4. Not Understanding Closing Costs  You&amp;#039;re not just paying for the house\u2014nothing is ever simple when buying a home. Carefully read and understand the sheet provided to you that explains closing costs. For example, you may have to reimburse the seller for fuel oil or propane. There may be fees from a surveyor, a title search company, and a notary. Municipalities can levy a fee for someone to come out and look at the house and check on its sidewalk and chimney. You get the idea. It seems that everybody and anybody who in some way has something to do with that house will get a cut of the action. 5. Not Having Cash on Hand for Unexpected Expenses  Weird things will go wrong with your home. Get used to it\u2014it&amp;#039;s part of being a homeowner. So be sure to have enough cash to handle surprises such as broken parts or to deal with seasonal problems such as buying a snow thrower when you (and your back) just can&amp;#039;t stand shoveling anymore. Funding these things with credit-card debt is a financial disaster. 6. Forgetting About Operational Costs  It sounds simple: You&amp;#039;re the owner now, so you need to heat and cool the home, clean it, maintain it, cut the lawn, perhaps trim the trees. But with all the other costs associated with closing the deal on the house and paying for the mortgage, it can be easy to forget that these costs are going to be your responsibility from here on out. This is another reminder not to blow all your money on the cost of the home. Skipping the Home Inspection An experienced and certified inspector is worth every penny. I don&amp;#039;t care how experienced a DIYer you are, there are things you&amp;#039;re going to miss when you look the home over. And it&amp;#039;s especially easy for you to miss something because you&amp;#039;ve got a lot on your mind as you consider the home. A home inspector has only one thing on his or her mind, and that is to perform a thorough mechanical investigation with a clear and experienced eye. Besides that, inspectors know the region and sometimes even the neighborhood. They&amp;#039;re great at spotting telltale signs that you might miss, such as that low area in the lawn that signals where there was (or might still be) a buried oil tank. Choose one from ASHI or a similar organization. 7. Not Using a Buyer&amp;#039;s Agent  Speaking of getting somebody knowledgeable on your side, it&amp;#039;s great to have a buyer&amp;#039;s agent because they represent only your interests, as opposed to a real estate agent and brokerage that represents the seller and attempts to find buyers for the property. (Real estate sales agents and the brokerages they work for are contractually obligated to the seller\u2014their commission is paid for out of the home&amp;#039;s sale.) There are real estate agents and brokerages that do double duty with homebuyers and sellers. There are also exclusive buyer agents, who only represent buyers and never sell real estate. Either type of representation can work. 8. Diving Into Remodeling Take the home for a test drive and live in it for at least several months to one year\u2014don&amp;#039;t dump loads of cash into a remodel right away. For one thing, waiting will give you a clearer picture of what you can tolerate and what you really do need to fix. Second, living with the home for a while will show how much you can afford to spend on remodeling now that you&amp;#039;re paying a mortgage, operational costs, and so on. People frequently overestimate how much they can spend to repair or remodel a home, so beware the fixer-upper. 9. Hoping to Cash In  Sure, everybody would like to make a killing by buying an inexpensive house in the little town that&amp;#039;s on its way to becoming the next 10. Great Place to Live  First-time homebuyers would do well to play it safe and shop conservatively. Look at the town&amp;#039;s past and carefully consider its future, even if you&amp;#039;re only thinking five or 10 years ahead. Given that home ownership has become a riskier proposition than it once was, your best bet is almost always a town with a solid past and a solid present. It&amp;#039;s likely that it will be a solid place in the future. -- Related: How to Pressure Wash Your House 10 Annoying Surprises that Trap Unsuspecting Homebuyers Via Popular Mechanics                           "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.countryliving.com/real-estate/advice/a5554/the-10-mistakes-first-time-homebuyers-popular-mechanics/>