Buying your first home is at once exciting and scary. Making that kind of financial commitment is enough to make anyone light-headed. A home loan is not something you want to enter into lightly. You need to do the legwork and really think it through before you sign on the dotted line.

If you’re thinking about buying your first home, here are some key points to consider:

• If you can’t stay long, don’t buy. If you can’t commit to living in the house for a few years at least, don’t buy. Between transaction and closing costs and the volatile home market, you might wind up losing money if you wind up selling in just a few years.
• Get your credit shored up before you buy. You need to start this process today, even if you’re not thinking about buying for another year. Get your free annual credit report and start looking for two things: errors and areas for improvement. If there are errors, you can contact the credit reporting agencies and try to get those cleared up. If you have old collections that need cleared up, you can do that too.
• Buy a home you can afford. Don’t buy something that the bank tells you that you can afford. Look at your budget in a realistic way, and make sure you have a real handle on all of your other financial obligations, your debts and your expenses.
• Look at the schools. Even if you don’t think you’re going to want to have kids, you should know what the schools are like in the area. You may find you want to have kids down the road. At the very least, good schools will generally help to increase your property value, so in some ways it’s just a good investment.
• Consider points, but make sure it’s worth it. When you get a mortgage you can usually pay down your interest rate by buying points. If you’re going to be in the house for five years, points are a good idea. If you’re not sure, go ahead and take the higher interest rate.
• Know the market. Figure out what homes are really selling for in your area, that way you can make a reasonable offer on a home you like. Look at several homes, and make sure you always sleep at least one night on it before you decide to go ahead with the offer process.