Buying Your First Home in Las Vegas: What Actually Happens, Step by Step

Your lease came up and the new number made you angry. That is how this usually starts.

So you started looking, and within about ten minutes you found pre-approval, earnest money, contingencies, escrow, appraisal gaps, and forty other words nobody has ever explained to you. It is a lot, and most of what is written about it is written for people who have already done it once.

Here is what actually happens, in order, in plain language.

Before any of it, one thing.

Not a wish list. A wish list is where everybody starts and it is why people tour eleven houses and feel worse afterward.

Instead, what does this house have to solve?

How long is the drive to work, and would you still be fine with that in August? Does it need to be in a particular school boundary? Do stairs work for you now, and in five years? Is there a payment that you are comfortable with in a bad month, not a good one?

Answer those four and your search shrinks by about eighty percent. Everything left is a house you could actually live in.

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that causes the most pain later.

Talk to a lender first. Not to find out the maximum you can borrow, because that number is almost always higher than the number you want to live with. Find out what your monthly payment actually looks like at a few different price points.

And make sure that payment is the whole thing, not just principal and interest:

• Property taxes
• Homeowners insurance
• HOA dues, which are common here and vary a lot
• Utilities, and in this valley that means what the power bill does in July and August
• Something set aside for repairs, because now they are yours

The pre-approval that comes out of this conversation does two things. It tells you what you are shopping for, and it tells a seller you are serious. Most sellers will not consider an offer without one.

If your credit is not where you want it yet, that conversation is still worth having now. A lender can usually tell you exactly what to fix and roughly how long it takes.

There are four main paths. Conventional, FHA, VA if you or your spouse served, and USDA for qualifying rural areas, which mostly means outside the valley.

They differ mostly on the down payment and how the mortgage insurance works. The one thing to take from this step is that you very likely do not need 20% down. Conventional can go as low as 3% for qualifying buyers. FHA is 3.5%. VA can be zero. Down payment assistance and gift funds from family are allowed in a lot of cases.

That single belief keeps more people renting than anything else in this business.

I wrote the full comparison separately, because it deserves more room than a step in a list. It is called What Should My Down Payment Be? FHA vs Conventional in Las Vegas.

Now the part you were actually excited about.

One rule that will save you: focus on what cannot be changed. Location, floor plan, lot size, the street, the drive. Paint, flooring, landscaping and light fixtures are all fixable and they are what tends to sway people in the moment.

Take notes and photos in every house. After four in one afternoon they blend together and you will not be able to remember which one had the good backyard.

And nothing is going to check every box. That is not you being picky or the market being bad. It is just how it works.

When you find it, we put together an offer. It covers the price, your earnest money deposit, your financing terms, which contingencies you are keeping, the closing date, and whether we are asking the seller for anything.

The seller can accept, reject, or come back with a counter. Countering is normal. It is not a rejection and it is not a fight.

This is the point where having thought about your comfortable payment pays off, because you will not be deciding in the moment under pressure.

You hire an inspector to go through the house before you are committed. Roof, foundation, electrical, plumbing, HVAC, windows, appliances, structure.

Do not skip this. Not to win a bidding war, not to save a few hundred dollars.

Every house has something. New construction has something. The point is not to find a perfect house, it is to know what you are buying and to decide what, if anything, we ask the seller to address.

Your lender orders an appraisal to confirm the house is worth what you are paying. At the same time, underwriting goes back through your finances one more time.

To you, these feel like one thing: a stretch of waiting where people keep asking for documents.

One rule during this window, and it is the one people break. Do not open credit, do not finance a car, do not make a large purchase. Not until you have the keys. Buyers lose loans at the last minute over exactly this, and it is heartbreaking every time.

Then you sit down at closing, sign a stack of documents, and the house is yours.

• Looking at houses before talking to a lender
• Touring above your range, because everything below it looks worse afterward
• Forgetting closing costs, which are separate from the down payment
• Emptying savings to put more down, leaving nothing for the first repair
• Financing something new before closing
• Skipping the inspection

You are going to have questions that feel dumb to you and are not.

Ask them the second you have them. That is what I am here for, and you are not going to wait two days for an answer. Most of what goes wrong in a deal goes wrong in the gap between when somebody asks something and when somebody gets back to them.

You get 100 percent of my attention whenever you contact me. That is the part that matters more than any step on this list.

Two numbers. What you are paying in rent right now, and what monthly payment you would actually be comfortable with.

Call 702-881-6562 or email JArendt658@gmail.com with those two and I will tell you roughly what that buys in the valley right now, and whether it makes sense to move on it this year or wait. If waiting is the right answer, I will say so.

John Arendt, Realtor, has sold homes across the Las Vegas valley for 20 years, in Henderson, Summerlin, Southern Highlands, Anthem, Boulder City and North Las Vegas.

This article is general educational information and reflects widely used loan guidelines as of 2026. Requirements, rates and programs vary by lender and change over time. Confirm details with a licensed mortgage professional.