The home buying checklist, start to keys
Buying a house is about sixty small tasks in a rough order. Almost none of them are difficult on their own. What makes the whole thing feel hard is that the order matters, the deadlines are contractual, and nobody hands you the list at the start. You find out that the appraisal was supposed to be ordered last week from somebody who is annoyed about it.
So here is the home buying checklist in six phases: your money, an agent, the search, the offer, the weeks under contract, and closing week. It runs from the first look at your credit report to the morning the deed records. Items marked Nevada are state-specific, because a good chunk of a Southern Nevada purchase runs on forms a national checklist has never heard of. Print it and work down it. The buying guide is the same ground as a process rather than a list, and how long it takes end to end is the short version.
Phase 1: before you look
This phase is money, and it comes first because everything after it is priced off what you settle here. The most useful move is to stop thinking in prices and start thinking in monthly payments. The gap between them is taxes, insurance, HOA dues and mortgage insurance, and it is bigger than most people carry in their heads.
- Pull all three credit reports, free, and dispute anything wrong before a lender pulls them. Corrections take weeks, and the score is priced into your rate. Here is what score you actually need.
- Write down two payments, the comfortable one and the ceiling, and run both through the payment calculator with taxes, insurance and dues in them. The ceiling exists only for the one house worth stretching for.
- Total the cash three ways: down payment, closing costs, and reserves for after you move in. See how much down payment you need, what closing costs run and the all-in number. If a smaller down payment is the trade you want, understand PMI before you make it.
- Get a real pre-approval, documents reviewed, rather than a prequalification off a phone call. The paperwork is the same either way.
- Decide the non-negotiables with whoever you are buying with, written separately before you compare. Three each, not ten. There is a method for that in house hunting together, and the ownership questions differ if you are buying with a friend or buying before marriage.
- Stop opening credit and moving large sums between accounts. That holds until the deed records.
A first time home buyer checklist adds three boxes
- Check what you qualify for before you shop a rate. Nevada down payment assistance is reached through a participating lender rather than by applying to the state, and it cannot be added to a loan afterwards. The first-time buyer assistance page holds the programs and who runs each one.
- Book the homebuyer education course early if a program you want requires the certificate. It is a condition of funding, not a formality.
- Paper any gift funds now: who gave them, when they landed, and a signed letter saying it is not a loan.
Phase 2: choosing an agent
You are not required to have one, and it is worth knowing what the job is before you hire for it. What changed in August 2024 is that the relationship goes on paper before a showing rather than after an offer, which makes the interview the moment that matters.
- Interview two or three, starting from the agent directory. Ask how many buyers they closed in your price band last year, and who covers showings when they are away.
- Read the written buyer representation agreement before signing it: the term length, the geography it covers, the fee, who pays it, and exactly how you end it early. All five are negotiable.
- Nevada: you will also sign the Duties Owed by a Nevada Real Estate Licensee form, required under NRS 645.252. It is a disclosure, not a contract: it says what your licensee owes you and what they owe the other side.
- If you tour a house without your agent, the person at the door works for the seller. That is what a listing agent is, and what you say about your budget goes straight back.
Phase 3: what to look for when buying a house
A showing is fifteen minutes and mostly furniture. Decide beforehand what you are checking. The expensive facts about a house are boring ones: the age of the roof, the age of the air conditioner, what the county record says, and what the association charges.
- At the showing: the roof from the street, the date sticker on the air conditioner and the water heater, the electrical panel, the taps, under the sinks and at the ceilings for old water stains, and which way the back yard faces. The full version is what to look for when buying a house.
- Ask the listing side: days on market, the price history, whether it has been under contract before and why it fell out, what conveys with the house, and why they are selling.
- Check the county record before you write anything: owner, last sale price and date, year built, square footage and lot size come from the assessor, not from listing copy. Here is how to read one, and what the market around it is doing. Still narrowing areas? Start from the active listings.
- Find the HOA before you fall in love: monthly dues, what they cover, whether a master association sits on top of a sub-association, and whether a special assessment is pending. In this valley that is most houses, so read the HOA guide.
- Drive the street at the hour you would actually be there, not the hour of the showing.
Phase 4: the offer
An offer is a contract with escape hatches, and the hatches are the part to read. Price gets the attention, but the terms decide what happens when something goes wrong. How much room there is depends on the market that week, not on a rule of thumb.
- Earnest money, commonly around one percent here, goes to the escrow or title holder, never to the seller directly. Get the receipt. Escrow is the neutral party holding it.
- Name your contingencies: inspection and due diligence, appraisal, and financing. Each one is a right to walk with your deposit intact, and each one has a date attached.
- Set the due diligence period in days, and be honest about whether you can get an inspector out in that window.
- Decide the appraisal gap question before you write, not after the number comes in: if the appraisal lands under the price, how much of the difference will you cover in cash, and what is your cap?
- Consider seller concessions toward closing costs rather than only a price cut, and decide whether a home warranty goes in the deal (whether it is worth it is a separate argument).
- Set the closing date and possession, and expect a counter. Then read what happens after an offer is accepted so the next two weeks are not a surprise.
Phase 5: under contract
This phase is a set of deadlines running in parallel, most of them measured from the day the contract was accepted. Almost everything here is time-limited, so the move on day one is to write every date from the contract into a calendar and work backwards from each.
- Seller's disclosure, Nevada10 daysDue at least this long before conveyance
- To cancel on the HOA package, Nevada5 daysCounted from the day you receive it
- Closing Disclosure3 business daysIn your hands before you sign
What you inspect, and what they disclose
- Book the home inspection immediately, so the report lands inside the due diligence window with room to negotiate. What it costs is small against what it finds. Add specialists (roof, sewer scope, pool) where it flags something.
- Nevada: the Seller's Real Property Disclosure is required by NRS 113.130 and is due at least ten days before conveyance. Read every "yes" and every explanation twice: the guide to the form goes section by section.
What the lender is doing meanwhile
- Your lender orders the appraisal. It is the lender's valuation, not yours, and it takes as long as it takes.
- Underwriting will ask for documents you already sent. Send them again the same day, and do not change jobs or finance furniture while they are reading.
Title, insurance and the closing paperwork
- Read the title commitment, especially the exceptions: easements, CC&Rs, old liens. The title company issues it, and title insurance stands behind it afterwards.
- Bind homeowners insurance before closing, not on closing day. The lender needs the policy in the file to fund.
- The Closing Disclosure has to be in your hands three business days before you sign. Compare it line by line against your Loan Estimate, and see what the form is, what the costs are and who pays which.
- Nevada: what you sign is a deed of trust rather than a mortgage. Same debt, different instrument, and it matters mostly if things go wrong later.
Phase 6: closing week
The last week is short, procedural, and the one place where a single mistake is catastrophic rather than annoying. That mistake is wiring money to a criminal, and it happens to careful people, because the email looked exactly right.
Confirm wiring instructions by phone, at a number you already had before this week. Never use a number or an account detail that arrived by email, even in a thread you have been on for weeks. Call again after sending to confirm the money landed. A wire that leaves is usually gone.
The week in order. The last item is the one that makes you an owner.
Final walkthrough
The day before or the morning of: agreed repairs done, everything that conveys still there, appliances, taps and the air conditioner running.
Funds and ID
Bring government photo ID. Money goes by wire or cashier’s check, per escrow’s instruction, on the instructions you confirmed by phone.
Signing
Read the numbers on the settlement statement against the Closing Disclosure while you are sitting there.
Funding
The lender releases the money to escrow, usually the same day or the next morning.
Recording, Nevada
The deed records with the county recorder, and that is the moment you own the house. Signing is not ownership, and keys are released after recording, which is why an afternoon signing can mean a next-morning move. The whole closing timeline is here.
Everything after recording is a different list, and the urgent parts of it are the locks, the utilities and the primary residence tax cap you claim with the Clark County Assessor, which the property tax guide explains under both caps.
The home buying checklist, in weeks
Typical durations for a financed purchase in Southern Nevada. The third column is what stretches each phase, because a delay is almost never mysterious once you know where to look.
| Phase | Typical duration | What can stretch it |
|---|---|---|
| Before you look | 2 to 6 weeks | Credit corrections, saving the last of the cash, self-employed income documentation |
| Choosing an agent | A few days | Interviewing more than three, or agreement terms you want changed |
| The search | 4 to 12 weeks | Thin inventory in your price band, losing offers, a non-negotiable nobody has built |
| Offer to acceptance | 1 to 3 days | Counters, competing offers, a seller who needs to find a replacement home |
| Inspection and due diligence | 7 to 14 days | Specialist re-inspections, repair negotiation, a slow bid on something the report found |
| Appraisal | 1 to 2 weeks | Appraiser backlog in a busy season, a low value and the rebuttal that follows |
| HOA resale package (Nevada) | 10 days for the association to furnish it | A slow management company, and a five-day cancellation clock that starts only on receipt |
| Loan underwriting | 3 to 5 weeks from application | Conditions, gift funds needing a paper trail, any change to your credit or employment |
| Closing week | 3 to 7 days | The three-business-day Closing Disclosure clock, which restarts only for an APR that goes out of tolerance, a change of loan product, or a prepayment penalty added |
| Recording (Nevada) | Same day to 1 business day | A late signing, a wire that misses the cutoff, a county holiday |
| Accepted offer to keys | 30 to 45 days | Any one of the rows above, and they do not run entirely in parallel |
Nothing on this home buying checklist is clever. The buyers who have a miserable time are almost always the ones who found out about a deadline after it passed. Work down the boxes, keep every contract date in a calendar, and confirm every wire by phone.
Sources
- NRS 113.130, Seller's Real Property Disclosure, completed and served at least 10 days before residential property is conveyed.
- NRS 116.4109, resale package for a unit in a common-interest community: the association furnishes it within 10 calendar days of a written request, and the purchaser may cancel by written notice until midnight of the fifth calendar day after receiving it.
- NRS 645.252, duties owed by a Nevada real estate licensee, and the disclosure form that carries them.
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Closing Disclosure and the three business days before closing it has to arrive in.
- Federal Bureau of Investigation, business email compromise, the form real estate wire fraud takes, and the advice to verify by a second channel.
