Alaska Home Buying Guide
Buying a home in Alaska can stir a whirlwind of emotions, from excitement to anticipation and even sometimes unease, especially if it’s your very first home purchase. There are hundreds of beautiful cities and neighborhoods to choose from, with everything from quiet rural streets to amenity-rich suburbs and urban corridors. How do you decide which is best for you?
Alaska is known for its breathtaking scenery, friendly atmosphere, strong eco-tourism industry, and exceptional quality of life. Buying a home in Alaska isn’t just about securing your long-term financial success, it’s about setting down roots where lifestyle rules. As your real estate professionals, we specialize in helping buyers find their perfect property, whether you’re looking for a quaint fishing cottage, a trendy downtown condo, or the quintessential family home. We can help you navigate the real estate market with ease, whether it’s Anchorage, Wasilla, Palmer, Fairbanks, Kenai, Soldotna or beyond.
Articles & Tools for Alaska Home Buyers
- Find out how much you can afford with our mortgage calculator.
- Buying your first home? Here’s a comprehensive guide for first-time homebuyers.
- Find your perfect home faster with our home finder.
- Learn more about what makes the Dar Walden Team the best and most experienced team in Alaska.
Buying a Home in Alaska
Get Your Finances in Order: Pre-Qualification & Pre-Approval
The first and most important step of every home purchase is making sure you can afford to buy. Unless you’ve pinched your pennies and saved up enough money to buy a home outright, you’re going to need financing to pay for a home. To do that, you’ll need the help of either a bank or a mortgage broker to help you get set up with a loan that best suits your finances and lifestyle.
Pre-qualification is a simple process that takes a quick peek at your finances to see if you could qualify for a loan. Pre-approval, on the other hand, takes an in-depth look at your debt-to-income ratio, current assets, and credit history, to determine how much you can afford to borrow.
In competitive markets, it can be worth your while to have a certificate of pre-approval on-hand when placing an offer on a home. It shows the seller that you’re serious, and it could be just what you need to beat out competing offers.
Connect With an Alaska Real Estate Licensee
With funding in place, it’s time to start shopping. For buyers, it costs nothing to enlist the services of a professional real estate licensee. You want someone who knows the area like the back of their hand. They know what neighborhoods you should go after for the best return-on-investment and which ones to avoid. They’ll put their industry experience and market knowledge to work to ensure your investment is a sound and successful purchase for years to come.
When you team up with the Dar Walden Team, you’re given access to industry-leading tools and technology to help take your home search to the next level. Let’s face it, you have other things going on in your life that you’re not going to be sitting at the computer screen, refreshing the page to see the latest listings as they hit the market.
Instead, we’ll send you listings that match your preferences the moment they hit the MLS®. Between your experienced licensee, our state-of-the-art technology, and Buyers Guarantee, we have what it takes to help you find not just a good home, but the perfect home.
Find Your Ideal Neighborhood
Whether you’re a homegrown resident of Alaska or moving here from afar, your Dar Walden Team agent will help you find the ideal neighborhood. What makes a house a home is its surrounding community. How far away are amenities? Is work a lengthy commute? Are there good schools nearby, or within walking distance? Let your agent know what’s most important to you and they’ll help you find that perfect needle in the haystack of the real estate market.