I agree with SD Realtor 100%. The best thing to do as an intelligent, educated, Internet-savvy buyer (as people on this Board all are) is to find the property you want, then bring in a strong, capable buyer’s agent to take over from there. Many buyer’s agents are happy to rebate a significant part of their commission to you if you’ve already found the home and they won’t have to drive you all over creation for months. It is a mistake to underestimate the complexity of the sales contract, the required paperwork, the value of knowing the market intimately (a good agent will know which streets have bad soils and can suggest you have the foundation inspected extra-carefully or maybe have a soils test done, for example), etc., and there are a million ways you can screw up the transaction, or fail to maximize your benefit, if you don’t know what you’re doing. Although I’m an attorney and consider myself competent to represent myself, I would never do that in buying a house, just like the people who try to save $2,000 by using a do-it-yourself will kit instead of using an experienced estate attorney are asking for trouble.
