If you have no house, no payment, and no orders in your hand yet, this is the page to read first.
Most of this site is written for someone who already has one of those things. This page assumes you have none of them, that the whole idea feels larger than you want it to, and that what you need is one clear thing to do first.
Begin by finding out what monthly payment you can carry comfortably, because the price of a house follows the payment and never the other way round.
Nearly everyone starts by scrolling through listings, and that is the step that makes the whole thing feel impossible, because a price on a screen means nothing until you know what it would cost you in the month you are actually living. So the first move is to settle that one figure while nothing is at stake and nobody is watching.
You can do it here, right now, without speaking to a single person and without giving an email address. The instruments run inside your browser, nothing you type is sent anywhere, and nothing on Teal Apex Homes asks you to identify yourself before it will show you a number.
- Nothing on this site commits you to anything at all.
You are welcome to read every page here, run every calculation twice, and never make contact with me. That is a perfectly good use of this site rather than a failure to use it properly.
- The payment is the ceiling, and the ceiling is the one you choose.
A lender will eventually tell you the largest payment it is willing to approve. That figure and the figure you want to live inside are rarely the same, and only the second one belongs to you.
- Everything after this is easier once that number exists.
A price range, a neighbourhood, a loan program, and a conversation with a lender all become concrete questions the moment the payment is settled, and they stay abstract until then.
Buying a home to live in and buying property to rent are different pieces of work.
Buying a place to live in is a decision about your life, and buying property to rent out is a decision about a return. Both are worth doing well, and mixing the two is how people end up disappointed by a house that was never meant to be a home.
You are buying a place to live in.
Then the rest of this page is written for you, and you can read straight down it. The order of events, the documents a lender asks for, and the part that is yours to decide are all below.
Continue down this pageYou are buying property as an investment.
Then the questions change, because a rental is underwritten rather than fallen in love with, and the arithmetic that decides it sits on its own page.
The investing side of the practiceYou are moving on a set of orders.
Then your timeline is not the ordinary one, because a report date sets every other date in the move. The relocation desk keeps a calendar built backward from that day, alongside the allowance tables and the VA loan rules.
Open the military deskThis is what happens, in the order it happens, from the first calculation to the keys.
Nothing here is a surprise once you have seen it written down, and most of the fear of buying a first home comes from not knowing what the next step is. Each stage below says what it is, roughly what it asks of you, and who is actually doing the work.
You settle the payment you can carry, and every step after this one answers to it.
This is arithmetic rather than an application, and it happens in your browser in a few minutes. What it asks of you is a clear look at what your month already costs, and at this stage the work is entirely your own.
You speak to a lender and come away with a pre approval rather than a pre qualification.
A pre qualification rests on figures you describe over the phone, while a pre approval rests on documents a lender has read and verified. The lender does that work, and what it asks of you is the paperwork set out in the next section.
You decide what matters to you in a home, and you write it down before you look.
Nobody else can weigh a shorter commute against a bigger garage, or a quiet street against being close to family. The list is yours to make, and having it on paper keeps a beautiful kitchen from quietly replacing the things you came for.
You tour with that list in your hand, and each home is read against it rather than against a feeling.
You look, and I bring the record for anything you ask about: closed comparable sales, condition notes, carrying costs, and drive times measured in minutes. What that material means for your household stays yours to weigh.
You write an offer, and every term inside it is explained to you before it is sent.
The price, the money you place at risk, the dates, and any concession you are asking for all sit in one document. I draft it and walk you through each line, and nothing goes to the other side until you have said what it should say.
The inspection happens, and its findings are turned into a repair budget with figures beside them.
You hire the inspector and you are welcome to walk the house alongside them. I read the report with you and put a cost and its source next to each finding, so what you ask the seller for is a negotiation rather than an argument about condition.
The appraisal is ordered by your lender, and it values the house independently of both of us.
An appraiser the lender selects visits the property and reports what it is worth against recent sales. Neither you nor I instruct that person, and if the value lands under the contract price we sit down and decide together what to do about it.
The loan objection window is the point at which your financing either holds or it does not.
Your lender works through underwriting while the file is open, and this is the deadline by which you say whether the loan is there. It is the protection that lets you step back if the financing does not come together, and I track it with you rather than leaving it on your calendar alone.
Closing happens, the title transfers into your name, and the keys are handed to you.
You review the closing figures in advance, we walk the house one last time, and you sign at the title company. I am there for both, and the file ends with a written summary of what you now own and what it costs you to keep.
The contract sets a dated deadline for the inspection, the appraisal, the association documents, the loan objection, and the closing itself. Those dates are negotiated between the two sides rather than fixed by law, which is why none of them appears here as a number of days, and why the calendar for your purchase is written once you have a property rather than in advance. How the engagement tracks every one of those dates
A lender is assembling a picture of what you earn, what you owe, and what you hold.
The list looks long the first time you see it, and it is far less intimidating once you understand that every item belongs to one of six questions. Which specific documents and which period apply to you is a question only the lender reading your file can answer.
Proof of who you are
A government issued photograph identification and your Social Security number, which the lender uses to pull the credit report the file rests on.
A record of what you earn
Recent pay statements, the annual wage forms your employer issues, and tax returns covering the period the lender names. Income that arrives as retirement pay, disability compensation, or support payments is documented in its own way.
Confirmation of where you work
Contact details for your employer, who will be asked to verify your employment directly. If you work for yourself, the lender asks instead for the business returns and profit statements that show what the business actually pays you.
What you hold and where it came from
Statements for your bank, retirement, and investment accounts, along with a clear trail for any money given to you toward the purchase. A gift is allowed on most loan programs, and it is documented rather than hidden.
What you already owe
Student loans, vehicle payments, credit accounts, and any court ordered support you pay. Most of this arrives on the credit report by itself, and you are asked to explain anything the report shows that you do not recognise.
Where you have been living
An address history with landlord contacts if you rent, or the mortgage statement, tax bill, and insurance page for a house you already own. A lender is confirming continuity rather than judging the addresses.
If you are serving now or have served, your lender will also ask for the Certificate of Eligibility and either a DD214 or a current statement of service, and the military desk explains how each of those is obtained. Nothing on this site asks you for any document at all, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau publishes a free guide to the whole borrowing process that is worth reading before your first lender conversation.
Which home is right for you, and which area you should live in, is a decision I will not make for you.
People are often surprised by that, and sometimes disappointed, so it is worth saying plainly and early rather than at an awkward moment later. There are two reasons for it, and the second matters more to me than the first.
- The legal reason is that fair housing law forbids steering.
A broker may not guide anyone toward or away from a neighbourhood, and that prohibition exists because the practice did enormous damage for decades. It binds me whether or not a client wants me to answer, and it protects the person asking as much as anyone else.
- The reason underneath it is that I do not know what your life needs.
I do not know how your family spends a Saturday, which drive would wear you down, whose door you want to be close to, or what you would regret giving up. Handing you my guess dressed as an answer would cost you far more than it saved you.
- What I do instead is give you everything the decision needs.
Closed sale prices, condition and carrying costs for any property you name, commute times in minutes, the public sources where school and census and community figures are published, and the questions worth asking about each. You read them, and the choice you make is an informed one and it is entirely yours.
You may not be buying at all, and there is a first step for you as well.
A page about first purchases can read as though everyone is shopping, and most people reading it are not. Whether the next move is a sale or another year in the house you have, the work starts the same way, with the figures written down where you can see them.
You are thinking about selling.
The first step is a written pricing memorandum rather than a conversation about what you hope to get. It names the closed sales it rests on, states the adjustment made for each difference, and reports the days those homes actually needed, so the list price becomes a decision you make from evidence you can read yourself.
How selling works hereYou are staying exactly where you are.
Then the useful first step is seeing what your loan is really doing, because the month it ends and the interest it costs on the way there are the two figures a statement never shows you. The payoff engine answers both, and it moves as you change what you pay.
Run the payoff engineYou can start with any one of these today, and none of them asks anything of you.
Pick whichever one you can face this evening. They are listed in the order most people find easiest, and there is no wrong door among them.
Run the numbers by yourself.
Five instruments run in your browser and ask for no email address, no account, and no name. Work through as many versions of your situation as you like, and close the tab when you are finished.
Open the instrumentsRead what you might be eligible for.
Assistance programs exist for first time buyers, for service members and veterans, and for several other situations, and a great many people who would qualify never find out that they do. The eligibility page sets out what each one is for and names the authority behind it.
What you might be eligible forWrite to me and ask one question.
A message is a question rather than a signature, and it is not a heavier commitment than the other two doors. You can ask one thing, read the answer, and go quiet for a year, and that is a normal thing for a person to do.
Send a messageThe Colorado Housing and Finance Authority publishes its own programs and its own eligibility rules directly, and reading them costs you nothing and tells nobody that you looked.
The Colorado Housing and Finance AuthorityEverything on this page is general information, and every instrument on this site is a planning model computed from figures you supply. None of it is a pre approval, a loan offer, an appraisal, or tax advice, and only a lender who has read your actual file can tell you what you qualify for. Rates, taxes, insurance premiums, and market conditions all change between the day a figure is posted and the day you act on it, so before an offer is written we confirm the real numbers together and put them in writing.
You are not expected to know how any of this works yet, and there is no rush anywhere on this page.
Buying a home is one of the few large things most people do without ever having practised it, so feeling unprepared is the ordinary starting condition rather than a sign that you are behind. The one step worth taking today is the payment, because it turns a vague and heavy question into a specific one you can answer.
When you want a person rather than a calculator, I am here, and a first conversation costs nothing and commits you to nothing. It ends with a written note of what we discussed and the figures we agreed to check next, which you keep whether or not you ever write to me again.
