Buying your first home needn't be as daunting or as stressful as you think. The process is very much like a recipe for cooking. Adopting a pro-active perspective from the day you decide to buy a home until you walk out of closing or escrow can be the single largest decision you make that will impact your overall home buying experience. Mark Nash author of 1001 Tips for Buying and Selling a Home offers tips to simplify and focus while buying and looking for your first home.

-Hire a full time experienced real estate agent, that has been in the market for at least three years. Ask at the office or friends and relatives who they had a good experience with. Don't use the same agent that is representing the seller of the home you want to buy, this is known as dual agency, and it doesn't benefit anyone but the real estate agent.

-Get pre-qualified or pre-approved for a loan before you start your home search. Meeting with a mortgage lender will clarify how much your comfortable spending on a home. The rule of thumb is to keep your housing cost around one-third of your income.

-Think about resale when buying. Off-beat locations such as busy streets, corner lots, noisy trains and jets will be more difficult to sell to choosy buyers. Buyers want quiet, middle of the block locations away from busy intersections and train tracks, both commuter and freight lines. You might get a discount when you buy for a second rate location, but it's one thing you'll never be able to improve.

-Don't test the waters with low-ball offers. Good try, but low-ball price offers do more to set up an adverse relationship between buyer and seller, which could cost the buyer more in the end. Don't start below ninety on a well priced property. Determine negotiating strategy before putting a low-ball to paper.

-If your buying a condo or co-op consider the management style of your potential HOA (Home Owners Association). How you HOA is managed is important and could impact your ownership experience. The management could be a professional property management company or self managed. Smaller HOA