Home Buying for Dummies [ILLUSTRATED] (Paperback)

~ (Author), (Author) "Every month, week, and day, we buy things: lunch, coffee, a magazine or vnewspaper, a new pair of shoes, and every now and then, a..." (more)
Key Phrases: professional property inspector, other important financial goals, ongoing interest rate, San Francisco, New York, Fannie Mae (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

This may be the best comprehensive guide for home buyers. Home Buying for Dummies is coauthored by Eric Tyson, author of several other books in the For Dummies series, and Ray Brown, a long-time real estate professional. Like other books in the series, this one is an easy and even entertaining read. But it does not gloss over details in pursuit of simplicity. Home Buying for Dummies covers all the bases, providing clear explanations and reasonable judgments on how to select a mortgage, hire a real estate agent, find the right house, and negotiate a good deal. The book goes further than most in providing helpful, specific information. For example, in discussing ways to save money for a future down payment, Home Buying for Dummies even includes the phone numbers for various mutual funds appropriate to different investment time frames. --Barry Mitzman

Product Description

Buying a home doesnít have to mean sinking your life savings into a money pit. If youíve always dreamed of owning your own home, hereís a book that tells you how to make your dream come true -- without getting a bum deal (and maybe saving a penny or two along the way). In Home Buying For Dummies, Eric Tyson, best-selling author of Personal Finance For Dummies and Investing For Dummies, and real estate professional Ray Brown give you the lowdown on home ownership. With almost 40 years of experience between them, Tyson and Brown tell you what you need to know to get the best deals out there. Whether youíre a first-time buyer or a real estate investor, youíll find tons of advice and practical information as well as the tools to negotiate like a pro with even the slickest real estate brokers.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 344 pages
• Publisher: John Wiley & Sons Inc; illustrated edition edition (May 24, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568843852
• ISBN-13: 978-1568843858
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 7.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (98 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #626,608 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

208 of 211 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is the book I used most often, March 22, 2002

By	BookGuy (USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Buying for Dummies (Paperback)

I just successfully bought my first house. I shopped Amazon.com and bought half-a-dozen "how to" books for buying a house before I started my search. I was buying this house on my own, and had no one to rely on for hand-holding or expert advice. I also had a lot of qualms about the whole process. Out of all the books I bought, this was the one I kept going back to. It's typical of a "Dummies" book in that it doesn't give you too much unusable knowledge, but--coversely--it also doesn't drill down to the nth degree on any one topic. This is okay, though. With the usual high-quality editing that goes into most "Dummies" books, this one is very easy to read. It talks about who to hire (e.g., real estate agent, mortgage broker, etc.), how to go about hiring them, how to go about getting a mortgage, what are the ins-and-outs of mortgages, how to get a down-payment together, and--I thought--most importantly; how to budget yourself in preparation for homeownership. This part on figuring out what you spend as a renter and what you think you'll spend as a homeowner helps you decide how much of a house you can afford, and, in my experience, this is one of the big mysteries of buying your first house. Overall, the book is comforting, reliable [now that I'm in a house, I can see that the advice was good], and well organized. If you don't know much about how to buy a house, this is a fine start and a trustworthy source of information.

78 of 81 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A must for new buyers, February 16, 2000

By A Customer

This book is amazing. I never considered buying a "for Dummies" series book because I thought they would be overly simplisitic, but this book proved me wrong. The authors do an awesome job of presenting just enough detail on every aspect of buying a home- I kept catching myself having a questions, then reading on to the net chapter and finding the answer. You may be tempted to skip around from chapter to chapter, but I've found that reading this book from the beginning is almost necessary since things like understanding which mortgage to get and how much of a house you want are all dependant on answers you arrive at in early chapters. I've just finished the book and feel well prepared and educated to tackle the house-hunting task now. A definite read.

44 of 45 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Pleasantly Suprised, June 13, 2005

By	Home Buyer "Ron" (Boston, MA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Home Buying for Dummies (Paperback)

I had purchased this book as well as The Idiots Guide for Buying a Home and was pretty impressed with Home Buying for Dummies. It was well organized, very readable and had very useful information that my parents wouldn't have told me. Some notworthy examples of how practical this book was include:
1. consider a tax free money market account to invest your down payment while you save depending on your tax bracket. Names of possible accounts were included.
2. Roth IRAs allow you to borrow against them tax free for the down payment as a first time home buyer.
3. What to consider for watching a housing market....
To name a few.

The Idiots Guide was an absolute waste of money. One of the reviewers here posted that Dummies was patronizing -- the Idiots guide was truely insulting. It actually seemed like a bad rippoff of the Dummies book, not to mention the font was twice as big and double spaced. I would have returned it if my spouse hadn't written in it. If you want it, look in the used books section...

I have to agree with another reviewer that some of the content is covered in other Dummies books like Personal Finances for Dummies -- but having the salient points repeated in the context of home buying was helpful. I dont have the other Dummies books mentioned so for me, the redundency between books was minimal.

Go with the Dummies book. Its an excellent intro to buying a home!