Customer Reviews

The Essential Guide for First-Time Homeowners: Maximize Your Investment & Enjoy Your New Home (USA Today/Nolo Series)

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(11)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is not so much an "Essential Guide" as it is a collection of mostly-useful tips, diluted with a lot of cute fluff. For example, there is a chapter with lots of bullet point lists for handling disputes with neighbors, along with a cookie recipe so you can "Woo the Neighbors With These Chocolate-Filled Cookies".

The book tries to cover too many subjects (home maintenance, real estate finance, neighbor law, etc.) and ends up with insufficient detail. The chapter on home maintenance contains a brief schedule of things to check in each month, but what is a first-time homeowner going to get out of the recommendation to "Test the pressure and temperature valve on your water heater by opening it and allowing some water to flow out"? As with most of the tips, a bit more detail telling the reader how to do this would make the advice useful instead of just nagging.

Most of the tips are helpful if incomplete, and most first-time homeowners would benefit from skimming this book. But the book should not be considered a substitute for a real reference on any of the subjects it covers.

I'm not a first time homebuyer, but I have 3 children who will be soon.

This book has a lot of good information for first timers. Like knowing when you move in where your main shut offs are - gas, water, electric, etc.

In some important areas not enough detail & specifics, i.e. financing, insurance, home inspections. Of course this should have been researched prior to purchase.

The author talks alot about home maintenance & upgrading. Before making any decisions on energy saving changes - "get an energy audit. A professional will perform several tests and assess your current energy use. There will be some upfront costs - usually $100. to $200 - and your utility company may even offer these services or subsidize payment to an independent auditor, if you ask. In any case, the audit may discover easily correctible problems. For more information, visit the Dept of Energy's Energy Efficiency & Renewable Energy website ( www.eere.energy.gov; type "energy audit" in the search box).

Other parts of the book didn't seem revelent, i.e. hybrid cars & organic gardening. Other books cover this type of information in much more detail.

Overall its an informative book & I'd recommend it. The 3 stars was an error, which this review page won't let me change. 5 stars

Navigating the maze of new and often competing demands that owning a new home can bring along can be quite overwhelming. This is doubly so if one is trying to do it on one's own, without an informed help of a friend or a relative. Even so, there are many legal and practical hurdles that can get in the way, which even the most seasoned homeowner has not anticipated. For all such prospective and current homeowners, "The Essential Guide for First-Time Homeowners: Maximize Your Investment & Enjoy Your New Home" is an essential and useful guide. It covers all the basics of selecting and purchasing your first home, and guides you beyond the first weeks and months of ownership and helps you with useful tips on how to maintain your home so that its value may not decrease over time. The only objection that I have with the book is that it devotes one whole chapter to "greening" of your home. Most of the suggestions presented in that chapter are so outlandish ("get rid of the lawn"), impractical, or both for most residential areas, that it clearly detracts from otherwise well written and useful book. Even with that caveat, this is still a very good book to consider purchasing if you are seriously considering buying your first home. It could very well save you a lot of time and money in a long run.

This is a great book for anyone buying a house for the first time, whether you've already signed the mortgage or have just started looking. Some of the advice is common sense, but a lot of the details are things you might not even think of if you've never owned a house before.

It covers a wide range of essential subjects, such as who to inform of your new address, how to prioritize and balance your finances in the beginning, how your taxes will change, what kind of routine maintenance needs to be done on a house, how to handle disputes with neighbors. It lends advice on property values, homeowner's insurance, and going "green". It also contains suggestions for things down the road, like refinancing, remodeling, and moving on to your second home.

I found it invaluable, since we moved into our first home about a month ago. I thought I knew all I needed to know, but this book proved me wrong!

Great book with lots of great tips for the first time home buyer. I am looking for a house. This will be my first time purchasing. The book came in handy with information on taxes, repairs, maintenance and anything and everything that has to do with your house. It is not just about finding and buying a house but owning and maintaining your home. It almost makes you think if you are actually ready to purchase a home or just continue renting and not worry about being a home owner.

This book covers a wide variety of topics, but none of them terribly in depth. It goes over basic tips about how to save money on utilities, how to do rudimentary home maintenance, a little about real estate law, etc.

However, this book is really directed at folks who are completely clueless. I will admit that there is something in here for everyone, but, if you buy this book, don't expect to take too much away. You'll find a half dozen or maybe a dozen things that you didn't know, but the rest will be things you have long known.

There is a chapter about how to get along with your neighbors. There are some useful tips about encroachment in there, but you could easily learn what to do with a phone call to town hall. Much of the rest of the chapter deals with issues of common courtesy.

The tips on saving energy are, by now, mantras. Use CF bulbs, use a water heater blanket or get a no tank water heater, keep the thermostat higher in the summer and lower in the winter, etc.

The chapters on maintenance and remodeling of the house are similar in content. There are a few useful tips about how to avoid problems with contractors, but most of it can be learned with a quick call to the Better Business Bureau.

The tips on dealing with your mortgage (pay it) and dealing with a mortgage that is behind (don't dodge your creditors) are, again, nothing revolutionary.

I think that this book is a decent thing to have, but it does not replace getting expert advice. It might make a good first resource, but the information contained in it consists of things that should be known BEFORE one buys one's first house.

Personally, I think that this book would be a great gift to college students or folks who are setting out on their own for the first time. Many of the tips can be used by folks in an apartment or even in a dorm room for the first time. It just seems to be a bit behind the curve for folks who have already made a major real estate purchase.

Fuzzy Wuzzy's Summary:
**** Recommended with warm fuzzies.

I am a homeowner, but not a new first-time homeowner, and I am not about to purchase another house anytime soon. While I found some of the information in this book fairly basic (and intentionally targeted towards first-time homeowners), there were various tidbits sprinkled throughout the book that were of use and interest to me. Having read several books from this publisher, I have found Nolo books to be highly variable in their level of content and detail. But this book makes for a good read for first-time homeowners in helping people to consider the plethora of whats/whys/hows involved in buying a house. While it is certainly not an all-encompassing reference book that covers everything in great detail, it certainly has nearly all of the bases covered, and provides for a great starting point to read as a primer, and helps you to think through the issues where you may need further investigation. As such, I would not call this book "The **Essential** Guide for First-Time Homeowners", but a more appropriate title would have been "The First-Time Homeowners Primer".

The thing about essential guides is that, well, the very title makes a promise. This usually entails containing all you need to know about a particular topic. This book does actually do that, with one "flaw" - it's an extremely brief overview.

Given that, I really liked it. It touches on things every homeowner needs to know, from how often you clean your gutters, to why you need insurance, to changing the locks after you first buy your house. (You'd be surprised how many people forget.)

At an inexpensive price, this guide comes in handy and makes a good start. A checklist for home maintinance is a nice touch, and the book, while short, is really informative. You may want other guides to expound on issues, and the book does suggest some (all by the same publisher), but overall, it's a great starting point. This would make an excellent gift for any first-time home buyers. Even if you don't buy, while it's nothing you can't get offline for free...I like having a book I can make notes in. Call me old fashioned.

The one thing I didn't like were lots of charts/graphs from USA Today polls put in margins, etc. They were interesting, but really didn't, well, add to the knowledge of the book per se. Still, all in all, that's a relatively minor complaint.

My husband and I have been in the process of looking for our first house for over two years now. With a crazy economy and everyone from his parents to the cashier at the local Walmart offering advice this has been a really tough process. Just when we think we've found 'the ONE' something comes up to show us it's definitely not or while we stall around trying to be sure we've found it someone else snaps it up. I'll even admit that we might have found 'the one' but home-inspection related concerns caused me to get cold feet.

So where do you turn when you have questions that aren't so much about the buying of the house but what happens next? If you're like me you probably don't want to deal with the opinions of in-laws, co-workers or the not-always-so-reliable internet. Because buying your first home is a very big commitment both financially and physically, my happening to find this book couldn't have come at a better time.

All I had to do was look at the chapter list to find answers to the majority of my 'well-then-what?' questions. Everything from budgeting home improvements and how to manage your mortgage to how to making your home more green is covered. With little tips, warnings and graphs just like you'd find in USAToday this book was easy to follow, clear and most of all--helpful!

While it may take another two years of searching for the perfect house, I'm definitely feeling more confident about some of those scary questions I had nagging me. I can't say I consider this the definitive guide but I think it's a great choice for someone who is looking for basic (and some not-so-basic) information to prepare them for the next steps of home ownership. Kind of like a What to Expect When You're Buying Your First House guide. I would certainly recommend this to friends and will be looking at other Nolo Essensial Guides in the future.

We don't own our own home yet, but we are looking! This book is much more than expected! It is loaded with information about not only owning a home for the first time, but advice on refinancing, income taxes, home repairs, figuring out what you make vs. what you spend...how to afford this big $ hungry monster. It even explains the different types of loans, using a mortgage broker or not, & gives lots of useful links to important websites. It also has sections on home foreclosure & the potential scams out there you want to avoid. There is so much info. in this skinny book, that I can't remember all of it!
I have a feeling that we are going to be using this book a lot when we finally have our own home. I'm already finding it useful without home ownership! I am learning before the big purchase!
This is a keeper!