Working with first-time buyers is one of my favorite parts of this job. There's nothing quite like handing someone the keys to their first home. But I've also watched enough transactions to know where the costly missteps tend to happen — and almost all of them are avoidable once you know to look for them. Here are the eight I'd most want you to steer clear of: 1. Skipping pre-approval. Shopping before you know what you can borrow wastes time and weakens your position when you find "the one."...

Almost everyone starts in the same place: you type your address into a website and watch a number pop up. It's hard to resist — and it's also one of the least reliable ways to price your home. Those automated estimates work off broad data and algorithms. What they can't do is walk through your home, notice the kitchen you remodeled or the view of the Organ Mountains from the back patio, or understand why your street commands more than the one two blocks over. In a market as varied as ours —...

I don't like leading with a scary topic, but this is one I'd never want a client to learn about the hard way. Real estate wire fraud is real, it's sophisticated, and it targets people at the most vulnerable moment of the transaction: right before closing, when you're wiring your down payment and closing funds. Here's how the scam usually works. Criminals quietly monitor email — yours, your agent's, the title company's. As closing approaches, they send an email that looks like it's from a...