Seven Mistakes First-Time Buyers Make in Massachusetts

Most first-time-buyer advice is generic. These are the mistakes that cost money specifically in Massachusetts, drawn from how transactions actually run here.

1. Treating the Offer to Purchase as non-binding

The single most expensive misunderstanding in this state. Massachusetts uses a two-contract structure: the Offer to Purchase first, the Purchase and Sale agreement about ten to fourteen days later. Buyers hear "the real contract comes later" and sign the Offer casually.

The Offer is a binding contract. It sets the price, the deposit, and — critically — every contingency deadline. By the time you reach the P&S, those dates are already running. Read the Offer as carefully as you would read the P&S, because in the ways that matter it is one.

2. Not having an attorney until the P&S

Massachusetts is an attorney state. Buyers routinely engage counsel only when the P&S arrives, which means nobody reviewed the document that set the terms.

Engage an attorney before you write your first offer. The cost is modest relative to the transaction, and the value is entirely front-loaded.

3. Assuming the way to win is to waive the inspection

This one changed, and plenty of buyers have not caught up. Since October 15, 2025, 760 CMR 74.00 — the regulation the Affordable Homes Act (Chapter 150 of the Acts of 2024) required — bars a seller of residential property, or their agent, from conditioning acceptance of an offer on the buyer agreeing to waive or limit a home inspection, and bars them from accepting an offer that would require it. Waiver is no longer a term you can compete with, and no listing agent may ask you for one.

What is still available is the pre-offer inspection: get an inspector through the house before offers are due, so you write from knowledge rather than hope. It costs an inspection fee on a house you may not get, which is cheap against the alternative. A buyer who is already under agreement may still decide not to inspect — but only as their own decision, uninfluenced by the seller, and only after the parties have signed the mandatory disclosure. the 2025 inspection law sets out what the rule does and does not do.

Before you talk yourself out of an inspection, understand what you would be accepting in this housing stock. Much of Greater Boston's inventory predates 1940. Knob-and-tube wiring, oil tanks, asbestos insulation, failing sewer laterals, and structural water intrusion are all live possibilities, and none are visible on a showing.

4. Ignoring the property tax bill

Buyers compare list prices and never look at the annual tax. Two houses at the same price in adjacent towns can differ by thousands per year, permanently — and unlike the mortgage, it never ends.

Pull the actual bill for the specific address from the assessor's database before you make an offer. See how Massachusetts property tax works for why the rate alone tells you nothing.

5. Underestimating cash to close

The down payment is the number people plan for. The rest catches them out: lender fees, appraisal, attorney, title examination, owner's title insurance, recording fees, prepaid interest, and the escrow account for tax and insurance — which the lender funds several months ahead at closing.

And you need reserves *after* closing. A first winter in an older New England house has a way of producing a heating bill and a repair in the same month.

6. Missing the mortgage commitment deadline

The P&S names a date by which your lender must issue a written commitment. If that date passes and you have neither the commitment nor a written extension, you can be in default — and the deposit, which by then is typically 5% of the price, is at risk.

This is not rare. Underwriting takes longer than anyone plans for, particularly with self-employment income, gift funds, or a condominium whose association questionnaire is slow to come back. Track the date yourself; do not assume someone else is.

7. Buying the house without buying the town

Greater Boston is decided street by street, not town by town. Which commuter rail station you can walk to, which elementary school an address actually feeds, whether the lot is on town sewer or Title 5 septic, whether the street floods — all of these vary within a single town and all of them affect both how you live and what you can resell for.

Visit at the hour you would actually commute. Drive the route. Walk to the station and time it. Read the town's capital plan for pending overrides. Each of the town guides here lists the named stations, named schools and the specific thing to check locally.

The ones that are simply expensive

Opening new credit before closing. A car loan or a furniture card between pre-approval and closing can re-underwrite you out of the loan. Buy nothing on credit until the deed is recorded.
Changing jobs mid-process, even for more money. Tell your loan officer before you do anything.
Skipping owner's title insurance to save a one-time premium on a state where the chain of title routinely goes back to the nineteenth century.
Trusting emailed wire instructions. Confirm by phone, on a number you already had. Closing wire fraud is common and the money is generally gone.

What to do instead

Get a real pre-approval. Hire an attorney early. Read the Offer as the contract it is. Budget the full cash to close plus reserves. Track your own deadlines. And know the specific street, not just the town.