Buying a Home in West Michigan
I read the property in person before you spend a Saturday on it, then tell you what I found.
What would my payment be?
Slide the bars or type your numbers. The starting numbers are examples; put in your own.
Under 20% down usually adds mortgage insurance. Your lender quotes it.
An example. Your lender quotes your actual rate.
Loan term
An example. Your town's millage and whether it's your main home set the real number.
An example. Your insurance agent quotes yours.
Estimated monthly payment
$2,207
Loan amount $270,000
- Principal and interest 77%
- Property taxes 17%
- Insurance 6%
- Principal and interest
- $1,707
- Property taxes
- $375
- Insurance
- $125
- Mortgage insurance
- from your lender
This is an estimate, not a loan quote. Your lender sets your rate, any mortgage insurance and your real payment; taxes depend on the town and on whether the home is your main residence.
Am I ready to buy?
Four quick questions. You'll see exactly what to do next.
Where do I start?
A few taps about where you are and what you want, and you get a plan written to you: what to read, what to watch, and the next step that fits.
Find my starting point →Most of My Buyers Are Not Here Yet
The people I work with mostly live somewhere else. Chicago, the Detroit suburbs, Grand Rapids, Indianapolis. Close enough to drive up on a Friday, too far to see a listing on a Tuesday afternoon because it just came on.
Which means the early part of this is happening on a screen, at night, on photographs taken by somebody who was paid to make the place look good. That is not a criticism of listing photos. It is what listing photos are for.
It also produces a contradiction I see in nearly every buyer, and both halves are true at once. You are not in a rush. And you will move within a day for the right one. I plan around the second version, because that is the one that actually happens.
Where would you like to start?
Before You Spend a Saturday on It
I go and look at properties before you do. In person, on your behalf, with your list in my hand. That is The Lakeshore Recon Method, and it exists because the gap between a listing and a place is widest exactly where it costs the most.
What I read for is the part a listing has no reason to mention. How the house sits on its lot. What is next door that got cropped out of frame. Whether the basement smells like a basement or like a problem. What the road is, who maintains it, and whether it gets plowed. Where the well and the septic sit, because out here most properties are not on municipal services and that changes what you are buying.
Then I tell you what I found, including the times the honest answer is do not bother. I would rather talk you out of four properties and be right about the fifth.
In their words
What working with me is like
Tamara was so patient and kind with our house search. From looking at disasters to beautiful homes, we had a lot of laughs. I would not want anyone else as my realtor. I'm happy to be able to invite her to our remodeled home so she can see the difference in our house to home.
Going with Tamara as our realtor was a fantastic decision! She is honest, calm, professional, and a fantastic listener. I would most definitely recommend her to anyone!
Be Ready Before You Need to Be
Two pieces of paper come before the good part. The Agency Disclosure, which Michigan requires before you tell me anything confidential, and which does not tie you to me at all. Then a Buyer Agency Agreement, which is the one that sets up the working relationship, with its term, its scope and the fee arrangement written into it. Every term in it is negotiable and it is agreed between us in writing.
And get pre-approved properly, not pre-qualified over the phone in nine minutes. The house a buyer loses is almost always the one they were not ready to write on.
I push on this harder than most agents, and the reason is a client who had been searching for months and could not come up to look. When the right lakefront lot finally appeared I called her from the car and told her to come now. Under contract inside twenty-four hours. That only worked because everything boring was already done.
The full sequence, with the Michigan deadlines that actually bind, is written out on how buying works here.
Which One of These Is Actually You
Buying a home is not one job. These are the versions of it I do most, and each page is written for that specific problem rather than being this page with a word swapped.
Waterfront, where the question is which water and what you want to do on it. Lakeshore land, which is where buyers get hurt, and where I walk the parcel first. A first home, where the job is explaining each step before it happens rather than after.
Relocating here from a city comes with practical surprises worth knowing in advance. Trading up turns on one decision, buy first or sell first. And on new construction, everybody in the room except you already has representation.
On a vacation rental the township rules come before the house, and on an investment the numbers come before the feeling. For VA and military buyers I have written down plainly what I have and have not done.
If you are not sure which one you are, that is fine. Most people turn out to be two of them.
What You Get From Me
More than $4 million in closed sales over my last twelve months, up from under a million the year before. I hold the Accredited Buyer's Representative designation from the National Association of REALTORS®. I was born here and I have lived here my whole life, which is a different thing from having read about the market.
Day to day that buys you somebody who explains the step before it arrives, keeps the dates rather than trusting them to memory, and says the unwelcome thing early.
She is so patient and calm, and takes the time to explain everything thoroughly. She is definitely the one you want in your corner.
Tell me what you are trying to do and roughly when. I will tell you honestly whether I am the right person for it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Do I need to be in Michigan to start looking?
No, and most of my buyers are not. Plenty of this works at a distance. I go and read properties in person, send you what I actually found rather than what the listing says, and we only spend your Saturday on the ones worth the drive. The part that does need doing early is the pre-approval, because when the right one appears here it does not wait.
What does it cost me to have my own agent as a buyer?
It is set out in the Buyer Agency Agreement we sign before we get into it, and every term in that agreement is negotiable and agreed in writing between us. Nothing about it is fixed by anybody else. Ask me directly on the first call rather than wondering, because it is a fair question and it has a straight answer.
How fast do I need to move here?
It depends entirely on what you are after. On good water and on well-priced land, days. Further inland and on ordinary houses there is usually more room to think. The way to have both is to be genuinely ready and then be patient, rather than being relaxed and then being fast, which is the order most people try.
Keep exploring
Ready to make your move with Tamara Hekkema?