Home Buying For Dummies® - Softcover

The best home buying book available!
By reading Home Buying for Dummies, for about the cost of a couple of movie tickets or dining out, you can quickly and easily discover how to save thousands, perhaps even tens of thousands, of dollars the next time you buy a home.

How can we make such a claim? Easy. Between the two of us, we've spent nearly 40 years personally advising thousands of people like you about home purchases and other important personal financial decisions. We've seen how ignorance of basic concepts and practices translates into money-draining mistakes. We know that many of these mistakes are both needless and avoidable.

No one is born knowing how to buy a home. Everyone who'd like to buy a home must learn how to do it. Unfortunately, too many people get a crash course in the school of hard knocks - and learn by making costly mistakes at their own expense.

Buying a home will probably be the largest purchase that you'll ever make. If you're like most people, buying a home can send shock waves through your personal finances and may even cause a sleepless night or two. Buying a home is a major financial step and a life event for most people. It certainly was for us when we bought our first homes. You owe it to yourself to do things right.

Why this is the best home buying book for you: *It's in English. Because we're still working with real people and answering real questions (Eric, through his financial counseling, teaching, and writing - Ray, through his radio show, real estate consulting, and writing), our information is current, and we have a great deal of experience at explaining things. This experience can put you firmly in control of the home-buying process (rather than having it control you). *It's objective. We're not trying to sell you an expensive newsletter or some real estate product that you don't need. Our goal is to make you as knowledgeable as possible before you purchase a home. We even explain why you may not want to buy a home. We're not here to be real estate cheerleaders. *It's holistic. When you purchase a home, that purchase affects your ability to save money and accomplish other important financial goals. We help you to understand how best to fit your home acquisition into the rest of your personal-finance puzzle. *It's a reference. You can read this book from cover to cover if you want. However, we know that you're busy and that you likely don't desire to become a real estate expert, so each portion of the book stands on its own. You can read it piecemeal to address your specific questions and immediate concerns.

Eric Tyson is a syndicated personal financial writer, lecturer, and counselor. He is dedicated to teaching people to manage their personal finances better. Eric is a former management consultant to Fortune 500 financial service firms. Over the past two decades, he has successfully invested in securities as well as in real estate and has started and managed several businesses. He holds a bachelor′s degree in economics at Yale and an M.B.A. at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
An accomplished freelance personal finance writer, Eric is the author of five other national best–sellers in the...For Dummies series: Home Buying (co–author), Personal Finance, Investing, Mutual Funds, and Taxes (co–author). His work has been featured and praised in hundreds of national and local publications, including Newsweek, Kiplinger′s, The Wall Street Journal, Money, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and on NBC′s Today Show, PBS′s Nightly Business Report, CNN, The Oprah Winfrey Show, ABC, CNBC, Bloomberg Business Radio, CBS National Radio, and National Public Radio.
Eric has counseled thousands of clients on a variety of personal finance, investment, real estate, and mortgage quandaries and questions. In addition to maintaining a financial counseling practice, he is a popular speaker on important personal finance topics.

Ray Brown, co–author of the national best–seller Home Buying For Dummies, is a veteran real estate broker with more than two decades of hands–on experience. A former vice president and manager for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage Company and McGuire Real Estate, and founder of his own real estate firm, the Raymond Brown Company, Ray is currently a writer, radio talk show host, and public speaker on residential real estate topics.
Ray believes that most people are pretty darn smart. When they have problems, it′s usually because they don′t know the right questions to ask to get the information they need to make good decisions. This book completes Ray′s residential real estate trilogy and fulfills his dream of helping folks find their way through the often mystifying process of buying, financing, and selling their homes.
On his way to becoming a real estate guru, Ray worked as the real estate analyst for KGO–TV (ABC′s affiliate in San Francisco), a syndicated real estate columnist for The San Francisco Examiner, and he hosts a weekly radio program, Ray Brown on Real Estate, for KNBR. In addition to his work for ABC, Ray has appeared as a real estate expert on CNN, NBC, CBS, and in The Wall Street Journal and Time.