Everything you need to know to buy a home, with tips and advice from real estate experts!

With rental prices sky-high, buying a home looks like a better investment than ever. But what steps should you take to find, buy, and move into your new home? Nolo's Essential Guide to Buying Your First Home will help you find the right place to live and invest in--and to enjoy the process, too.

As exciting as buying a first home is, it involves huge financial, contractual, and other decisions. This book gives you the inside scoop from industry experts such as real estate agents, mortgage brokers, home inspectors, and lawyers. It provides clear, in-depth information about important steps like:

checking out prospective homes making a purchase offer that a seller will choose above all others getting a mortgage whose terms you can live with examining the house's physical condition negotiating complications during escrow taking title, and closing on the purchase.

You'll hear from other homebuyers, too--about important lessons learned from what went right or wrong with their own home purchases. This latest edition is fully updated to reflect current real estate and mortgage market conditions as well as technological innovations.