How Long Does It REALLY Take to Buy a House in DFW? (Step-by-Step Timeline Explained)

So you've decided it's time to make a move. It's time to buy the house. Maybe you're selling and buying. Maybe you're getting out of that rental. Maybe you're coming from out of town. Whatever the case, you have decided it's time to purchase a home and move into it. Well, how long does that actually take? We're getting into it today. We're talking specifics, timeline, process, things to know, things to avoid, things to look for. We'll be all over it as we make our way through the show today. But by the end, you will know for sure in the market in Dallas, Fort Worth right now, how long is it taking to find and then process the whole deal, the transaction, and be able to move in to your new home. Now, my name is Todd Tremonti. This is DFW Real Estate Weekly with Todd Tremonti. But I'm not alone. I've got the whole crew with us. You'll hear from them as we make our way through. So when a client comes to us, when a buyer or seller comes to our team, the Todd Tremonti Home Selling Team here in DFW and says, I'm ready to make a move. This is where the conversation begins. We start to tell them, let's begin with the end in mind. Let's think about the goal first, and then we'll work our way back. So the conversation with somebody who's ready to buy or thinks they're ready to buy or wants to map out their timing really starts with, when would you like to move in? Let's begin with the end in mind. When would you like to move in? When do you want to have your first meal in your new home? When do you want to sleep in your new home? So once we're able to do that, then we can start to lay out a timeline, which actually works from that date backward towards us into the current time. Can I add one thing really quickly? Sure. Because oftentimes, even with the when do they want to move in to it, we have to coach them through that. Because they may say, well, we're going to say to them, I get that. Do you actually want to be in by Thanksgiving, or do you want to be in a couple of weeks ahead of time so that you can get settled and so that you can have all the things in place that you need to have in place? And it's the same with people that say, well, my lease is up here. Hey, do you want to have a couple of weeks to be able to move in somewhere so that you give yourself a little bit of a buffer? Right. And so that's why we use terms like have your first meal in your home or move into it. Right. Because you might want to paint every room in the house. So we're not saying when do you want to own them? Yeah. When do you want to close and fund necessarily? We're saying when do you want to be in the home now? You might want to move in and then do some of that work. That's fine. But we're going to get clear on whatever that is. We're going to get clear on what that end goal is, because those things will dictate a very, very different timeline. For example, if you said, I want to own it as soon as I can, but then I want to be able to do three months of total gut and remodel before I move in. Okay, cool. Well, then we're going to start with that final, final, farthest out date and work our way back to try to make this process work for you. The big point here to just to kick it off is we're starting with that final destination, and then we're starting to chunk out how long does each part of the process take so that we can lay out very clearly when do you need to find the home by? When do you need to have it under agreement by? How much time can we give ourselves to shop around and view property? Ian, you can give people just a quick glimpse. By the way, Ian Daniels, team leader of the Touch Money Home Selling Team, helping people do this all the time. How long does it take for most people to close, transact, get keys for their house once they have it under contract? I like to tell people, and we actually have been training some new folks on our team, this is that same thing, 30 to 45 days. Now, can that be sooner? Yes. Cash can often close within a week. Is it going to be longer than 45 days? There's a chance if documents are missing or something is hard to find. Yes, that's a possibility. But generally speaking, 30 to 45 days and I tell people to err on the side of 45 days just again to make sure that they have a buffer. I would hate for somebody to be like, 30 days and then it takes 36 days and now they're behind in the process. I'd rather them say 45 days and we did it a little bit sooner. Yeah. And just so people know, what happens in this 30 to 45 day period is when people are getting financing, they're getting inspections, there's underwriting, there might be a third party entity that requires something, maybe a document from an estate or proof of funds. You just never know through lending, inspections, processing, transfer of title, local taxing authorities. There's a lot going on there. This is one of the places people often discount the value of a real estate agent or they discount the value of experience and knowledge in this process. It's more than just the basic obvious things, but 30 to 45 days of the process of purchasing a home. Now, Ian already said there's a few things that could speed that up. If you have cash up front, that can speed up the process. You don't have the mortgage and underwriting process. If you were willing to, I don't recommend it, but if you're willing to waive an inspection and things like that, there's probably no concern over the condition of the home then. So those things could speed it up. But generally speaking, we determine the date that you want to be fully ready and moved in, any repair time, any remodel time, things like that, and then 30 to 45 days for the process of transferring ownership. So really the next big piece of the process is how long does it take to find a house? And that is an unanswerable question. How long does the process of locating a home that you love, searching for homes, getting comfortable, being ready to make an offer, how long does that process take? Well, it just depends. It depends on how confident you are. We always say that as real estate agents and brokers, we actually really like picky people, not obnoxiously picky people, but we like it when you know exactly what you want. And you can easily say, nope, that's not it. I don't want that. Great. Okay. Let's move on. Oh, this one is exactly right. It can be challenging when you're like, I'll know it when I see it. It'll just feel right. And that does happen, by the way, there's nothing wrong with that. That's just harder to define the timeline of. So if you said to me, I know exactly what I want. I want four bedrooms, two to three bathrooms, two to three garages. I want to be on a half acre or more. Here's my budget. Schools matter. Commute doesn't. Okay. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. We've got a bunch of details. Now I'm like, all right, well, there's like four homes that meet that criteria right now. And there's three that have sold in the last three months. So there might be one more coming each month, maybe. So we we're looking at basically all of your options and there won't be a lot more options coming. I want to add something because you're right that this is a undetermined amount of time, right? Is it fair to say on average four to six ish weeks? Possibly, right? That's if, well, statistically that it's exactly fair to say most people figure this out in a month or so. And it all depends, right? It depends on how many properties are. One thing I want to say, because there might be people that watch or listen to this and they're thinking, well, I'm, I am picky. I want to be in this specific neighborhood and this type of house. And I also have a home to sell. I know we're talking about purchasing the home, but this is where if that is you, we can talk to you about it because we do what we call push button ready on homes like this. I can think of two or three clients that we have right now where they're very specific on what they're looking to buy. So we have the house staged, it's photographed, it's literally ready to go live. As soon as they find the house that they want and we can get them under contract, then we're able to get the home listed and we make it as smooth and seamless as possible. Right. So things that can slow it down are not being prepared to sell a current home, not understanding your lease terms. If you're currently leasing a home, you know, super unrealistic expectations, not having your budget all sorted out with a lender or with your bank, uh, things like that. Now you could speed it up by being, um, like super prepared with your expectations, being fully ready to make an offer. Um, you can be, um, like, uh, like have a checklist in place ahead of time, have already driven neighborhoods and narrowed all that down. Now, the next piece, if you are getting financing, which most people are, is that pre-approval process, right? So that shouldn't take very long at all. If you're just like generally organized, meaning you can find pay stubs from your job, from your, from your income, you could go pull your past taxes out of turbo tax or your accountant or whatever the case is. So this usually is like one to two weeks. It could really happen in like two days if you're totally buttoned up, but it could take an, like an indefinite amount of time if you're just not able to follow up and provide basic information. But generally this is a pretty quick process for pre-approval with the mortgage. You know, we have go-to lenders we've worked with forever. Patrick Larris has been the only personal lender I've ever used for 20 plus years. And we, a lot of clients work with him. It could literally be two days if you're really well put together. Usually it's one to two weeks because you have life going on as you're gathering some information. Now, what can slow it down? If you have poor credit, if your finances are not in order, if you're dealing with some collections or some significant debt issues, if you work with a poor lender, if you work with a low quality lender, who's, they're the delay, they're the bad communicator. They don't know what they need. They're asking for things two and three times. What can speed it up is, you know, being really diligent with collecting documents or having those things already really, really well in order, which is a lot of times the case with people that are, have been dreaming, saving, preparing to buy. We always say you can't start that conversation too soon, but most people start it too late. So we help people get started and prepared really early and speaking with the lender really early. So when it's go time, that's a couple of days instead of months. Can I emphasize something that you've said a couple of times already today? I would love for you to do that. So whenever you're like learning or studying something, if the author or whatever it is you're reading makes the same point over and over and over, kind of probably means it's an important point that the author is trying to make you understand, right? Life lessons with Ian. We have said at least two or three times already that having a reliable lender is so important because it can slow down the process in multiple different ways, whether it comes to closing, whether it comes to the pre-approval. So I just think I want to, I want to point that out that having a reliable expert lender is incredibly important throughout this process. Real quick, want to go to full press Courtney, because I thought you were going to say something else. I've repeated something else multiple times. I thought you were going to say, and it was about slowing down before you speed up. And Courtney is at her heart like me. We don't like to slow down. We like to get excited and just go. We'll figure it out later. So being in the office with a team of real estate agents in the marketing and media side, how often do you hear agents talk about the damage and the carnage of somebody who isn't prepared or who was just like super emotionally led or undisciplined in that scenario? It's been pretty shocking. And the ramifications of it have been really eyeopening to me, especially to watch people think like, oh, I know better. And so I'm going to move forward and whatever I think that I'm supposed to do. I know better because I feel like I want it. I'm just excited and I want it all to go my way. So I'm not going to follow instruction. I'm just going to do what I want. And by the way, we're not bad mouthing clients. We're just saying that one of the other things I thought you're going to bring up, because I've said it so many times, is most people wait too late. They're not prepared. They're emotional. So they start the conversation too late. And then every piece of this timeline takes longer. So we're talking about all the key chunks of the timeline to go find a house to get it all transacted and lending inspections and all that and get it closed and funded and repaired and move in and enjoy it and love it and have it to be the home that you always want it. You didn't really want any of the stuff in the middle, but that stuff needs to happen. And that stuff's good for you. It's good to get good financing terms. It's good to make sure the house is in good condition. It's not the most fun, emotional part. It's not the dreamy part. It's not the part you see on HGTV very much, but it's critical. And that's why we're walking you through it. But the warning here is don't wait till the end. Don't let your emotions lead you. It's good to fall in love with a home and be excited, but it is literally never too early to start this process. We've actually helped out family members and friends that did leave it too late. This was before we were even in real estate, but they'd left it too late. And so we've had people live with us on two occasions that I can think of while they were in between homes. Yeah. So we've said this a couple of times, but let's just clarify what we mean by this. It's never too early to start the process. If you're thinking, hey, when our children graduate and our youngest is in ninth grade, so we have three plus years, but we know when they graduate, we're going to sell this house and we want to move out to the Lake and buy a home out there. Great. Well, it's literally not too early to call us this week and just say, hey, we're not in a big rush at all, but we're kind of interested what over the next three or four years, what could we do so that when we're ready for this, it's like a home run scenario. We make the most selling this house. We save the most buying that house. It's no drama. We're not sleeping on our friends' couches. We're not living with our in-laws. We didn't waste money. We've maximized our financial opportunity. We've minimized the stress and the drama, and we have the dream home that we want. So often when we have those conversations, which is actually not as often as it should be, but when we do so often people at the end of the final thing, three or four years later, sometimes three or four months, sometimes three or four weeks, they're like, man, this was so go read our reviews on Google. By the way, those are the people that are like, this was so easy. This was so simple. These people are amazing. We made so much extra money. This was fun. We would do it again, but we don't need to. So you cannot start that conversation too early, but when you come in and you're like, I just heard from my employer, I need to be in Atlanta in 32 days. That's not always your fault, by the way, but when that happens, you have started the conversation too late. When you're like, hey, we decided over the weekend that instead of upgrading the kitchen, we're just going to move and we saw a house and we want to make an offer. We can help you with that, but you're going to have a lot less freedom, a lot less flexibility, a lot less opportunity. You're going to have less leverage. You're going to have more risk. So that's what having the conversation too late looks like. Now there's one other piece we haven't got to quite yet, and I'd love to have you chime in on it a little bit, Ian. I've got a couple of for sure thoughts on this, but how long does it take someone to prepare for their home search? So we just said, you can't start the conversation too early. We've broken down some of the more mathematical chunks of financing, kind of the underwriting of closing funding, moving in, things like that. How long does it take someone to get ready to start that normally four to six week home search period? I mean, again, the number can vary depending on how organized somebody is or how clear they are on what it is that they're looking for. But I think most people, you know, they're thinking two, three months ahead of time, like kind of getting their minds in the right place to make a move because there's a lot that goes into it and it can be a very stressful time. And so you want to make sure that life, work, kids, sports, whatever it looks like, that life is going to line up with the timing of buying a house. Now, breaking news, it will never perfectly line up. Oh man. I know, right? All right. So I agree with everything Ian said, but the one thing he said is the most important thing and that's it. It's obviously totally depends on the person and the situation. There is no standard amount of time. Here's what I will tell you. Oftentimes, people will sit down with our team, the Dr. Money Home Selling team, with what we call a initial consultation. And we know that in the initial consultation, this is not a presentation about us and our trophies and all that. We'll tell you our track record and all that, of course, to help you decide whether you want to trust us or not. But so much of it is actually about helping the buyer do this. So the answer to the question of like, how long does it take to prepare for your home search? Oftentimes, people have decided, I know I want to buy, but they're not yet prepared and they come to meet with us. And in one evening, one afternoon, one Zoom call, because we have a process for this, they come away more prepared for their home search than they have ever been prepared for a home search in their life. And many of them have bought multiple homes before. So we're asking them thought provoking questions about what we call their core motivation. They're true under the surface level, real motivating reasons for buying the things that are truly most important to them. So the answer I'm trying to give here, how long does it take to prepare for your home searches? Sometimes it takes about 90 minutes with a thoughtful leader, guide, advocate, professional, one of our agents on the Dr. Money Home Selling team that's trained for this. We have a process. It's an exercise to help you get more clear on this. Some people are never really prepared for the home search they have. They're going to get pregnant. They're going to have a baby. They feel like they need more space. Logic says more space means go buy a house, go buy a bigger house. And so they do that and they're fine, but they're not knocking it out of the park because they haven't really identified some of those deeper motivations, some of the more important factors, and they're not fully prepared. So the process takes them a little longer. It's a little bit less rewarding and they're a little bit less satisfied with their situation. So obviously you got to figure out things like school, commutes, amenities, pricing, budget, when these properties are available to be seen. Is this a cash or financing thing? How does your credit look? Do you need to pay off some debt? What do you need to do to prep your home for sale? When is your lease up? Are there any other parties involved in the purchase or sale or lease or any of those things? All that's important. What I'm talking about is the part where you really truly know what you want, why you want to do it, what your non-negotiable factors are, and often that takes the help of a professional. But the good news is with someone like our team at the Tajamani Home Selling Team, or if you're in a different market or you have someone else you truly trust that's world-class, that's full-time with a team of experts, great technology, awesome track record, then that can probably happen in an hour or two with someone to guide you through a proven process to get that done. So all in all, if you add all that up, most people need a couple of months minimum to get this done. 30 to 45 days for it to close, three to six weeks for the search process, one or two weeks for pre-approval, and then you might need a couple of hours or a couple of months to get your head right, to get fully around the idea of being prepared just to initiate that whole process. So this could be 60 to 90 days, or absolute rapid fire, perfectly prepared, mentally ready, have a great leader in place with cash, you really could do this in two weeks. But what's normal is six or eight weeks. We've had people this year close from the initial conversation to having the keys in their hand for a new home one month. More realistically, because that was a unique situation, I like to tell people, give yourself three months. If it's a little bit sooner, great. Before we wrap this up really quickly, let's just say someone shows up right now and they're saying, hey, it's spring and I want to move before summer. I would first ask them to define what summer is for them. Exactly what I was going to say. So thank you very much. Doesn't matter when you're listening to this, but just think about the seasons here. So we would then say, okay, before summer, does that mean when your kids are out of school or when the weather gets really hot, what is that? So let's just say right now, somebody said, before school starts again. Oh, that's a very, very different answer. A lot of people want to move over summer that have children because they're not in school. I actually sometimes think that's backwards. It's easier to move when they're in school all day and you can handle the details outside of that, but that's not true for everybody. So then I would say to them, okay, great. We're recording this right now in April. Okay. So that gives us in our region of DFW basically till the end of July. Okay. So you've got May, June, July. That's only three months. It's a little more than three months, depending on when you're catching this in April, but let's just say three and a half months. All right. Well, Ian just said, give yourself at least three months. So now is the time to be preparing. If you want to comfortably, safely, financially responsibly without all the emotional drama, if you want to move, have time to handle a few things, have a delay here or there, fix something, not lose your mind, be able to schedule around a vacation, all those things right now is actually the time you'd want to be getting prepared to be able to move before the end of the school summer vacation. Just to put some dates on it, just like bring that to life. If somebody wants to be in a home August 1st and we're saying 30 to 45 days, lean on 45 days to close after you're contract. It means you want to be under contract in the middle of June. And if we're saying four to six weeks on average to find a home, that means you need to start looking May 1st and it's April right now. So you have about three weeks. To get pre-approved for financing, you might want a week or two. So we're saying, you know, start acting now. Yeah. Now we're not saying if you don't act now, you'll never get a home. That's not what we're saying. What we're saying is to do this well, to do this full of joy, to be in a home you're proud of, to have been patient enough to go. No, we didn't get pressured into buying that home. We weren't in a huge hurry. We didn't get pressured into using the sketchy lender because we had time to shop around. We didn't get pressured into accepting this house without these critical repairs because we weren't at risk of being homeless. We didn't sell our house way cheaper than we wanted to because we fell in love with this house to buy and put ourselves in a pinch. No, we're telling you that if you plan way ahead, if you start the conversation early, most of the time, like the vast majority of the time, you will have bought yourself enough time to sleep well, steward your resources well, steward your time well, and really enjoy the process of selling and buying or buying or getting out of a lease and buying, maybe even doing repairs. So that's the answer to the question, how long does it take to find a house and move in? But what we're saying is take more time than you need so you can make excellent decisions. And obviously, if we can help you do that, we do that all day, every day in the Dallas-Fort Worth area with the team across the market, with agents who specialize in either the buy side or the sell side, either the Dallas side or the Fort Worth side. So you can have multiple specialists plus our full staff, our technology and everything behind you to make sure that this process goes really well. And you can find our information somewhere near this episode. Very easy to find us on Google as well. So hopefully, this was helpful. If you're thinking about making a move, this is a thought process that brings peace and joy and ease and great real estate decision making to your life. And we love to help people do that, whether it's here just as a podcast episode resource or representing you in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. If we can help you with that or anything else, drop that in the comments. If this was helpful, send it to somebody else that would be helpful for. Go ahead and give us a like and then leave us a review on the podcast and we'll keep putting out good, helpful information for you to make your life easier, more joyful, and a heck of a lot more rewarding when it comes to your real estate.