For you, as a first time buyer, buying home is the most exciting enterprise. It is also the most important investment you would be making for a long time to come - an investment which will dominate your life for the next 15 or 20 years. So you should approach the enterprise with all the serious consideration it deserves.

From the point at which you start seriously thinking of buying home to the point at which you move into your newly acquired home, the process of home buying can be broken down into five major phases. Each of these stages is vitally important for satisfactory conclusion of the enterprise.

• Formulating your concept of what you want; determine your needs;


• Budgeting and planning resources
• Viewings
• Inspections
• Conveyancing: Making offer, Legal work

In the excitement of buying home, quite often a first time buyer tends to gloss over the primary step of formulating concept of what he wants. It sounds so elementary to state what one wants - of course, one wants a nice house in a beautiful locality, which will be full of life but will give enough privacy for the small loving family.

But is this your requirement or your dream? Think again, think harder and separate your needs from your dreams.

After you have formulated your ideas of what you really want, comes the million dollar question - have I enough in my kitty to get me that "realistic" dream? How do I raise the money? And how do I lighten the burden of loans, mortgages and interest payments?

Now that the two major questions are out of the way, its time for some leg work. You could start looking around for a suitable home. There are so many avenues in which your hunt could go. Sit down and work methodically.

But while the exercise of viewings is on, don't forget that you may want to make sure that your short listed properties are in good health. You may have to get professional inspector to see that the property you buy does not become a millstone round your neck.

It's time now to get your conveyancing solicitor to start attending to the complex legalities of putting the deal through. With the painstaking thought process you have followed, it will not be long before you can plan to move into your "castle".

It's Champaign time now!

We shall take a little closer look at each of the five stages of home buying mentioned above in the follow-up articles.

S. Phadke is a retired electrical/control engineer, with over 45 years experience in senior positions in India & abroad. He has wide ranging interests. He enjoys writing and has been writing articles on Real Estate, Conveyancing, Retirement, Energy Conservation, Home Based Industries, Online Data Storage, Networking, etc. He can be contacted at snphadke@gmail.com His blog URL is http://snphadke-energyreview.blogspot.com

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