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The One-Page Home Buying Plan (Seattle Edition)

A fill-in-the-blanks one-page plan for buying a Seattle home — budget, must-haves, offer rules, and walk-away lines, decided before the pressure starts.

By Manaky Homes

Most home-buying mistakes aren’t made at the signing table — they’re made on a Tuesday night, under deadline, when a decision that should have been settled weeks earlier gets improvised instead. The fix is unglamorous: write the plan down before the market starts asking questions, and make it short enough that you’ll actually use it. One page. Fill in the blanks below, print it, and bring it to every tour and every offer conversation.

How to use this: copy the template into a doc (it’s plain markdown), fill it in over a weekend with everyone who gets a vote, and treat the bracketed blanks as homework assignments — each one has instructions underneath. Revisit the page after every lost offer or major rate move; a plan that never updates is just a keepsake.

The One-Page Plan

OUR HOME BUYING PLAN — drafted ____ / updated ____

WHY & WHEN
We are buying because: _______________________
We want keys by: ________ and we'd rather miss that
date than break the rules below.   [initials: __ __]

MONEY
Lender pre-approval amount:           $________
OUR max purchase price (our number):  $________
Max monthly all-in payment (PITI+HOA+dues): $________
Cash to close (down + closing costs): $________
Stays untouched as emergency fund:    $________
Earnest money we're comfortable with: $________

THE HOUSE
Areas we're shopping: 1)________ 2)________ 3)________
Non-negotiables (max 4):
  1)________  2)________  3)________  4)________
Nice-to-haves we will NOT pay a bidding-war premium for:
  1)________  2)________  3)________
Dealbreakers: ____________________________________

OFFER RULES (decided in advance, in the calm)
Escalation cap rule: list price + $______ OR our max,
  whichever is LOWER.
Contingencies we keep unless ________: inspection / 
  financing / appraisal protection up to $______ gap.
We pre-inspect only if: _____________________________
We go in clean only if: never / only when ___________

WALK-AWAY LINES (any one = we're out, no debate)
Price above:        $________
Inspection finding: ________________________
Monthly payment above: $________
Gut check: if we lose this house, we will be
  disappointed for: ☐ a week  ☐ a season  ☐ forever
  ("forever" answers get a second conversation, not a
   bigger number.)

TEAM
Agent: ________ (fee: ______, agreement signed: __/__)
Lender: ________   Backup lender: ________
Inspector on call: ________  Sewer scope: ________

SIGNED: ____________   ____________
(Both signatures. Future-you is the counterparty.)

How to fill in the hard blanks

“Our max purchase price.” Start from the affordability calculator with honest inputs, then subtract for the life the lender can’t see — childcare, travel, savings rate. The pre-approval is the lender’s ceiling; your number should be lower, and once it’s written and initialed, a bidding war is no longer allowed to renegotiate it. (If you want the full set of figures behind this section, the companion piece is the ten numbers that matter when buying in Seattle.)

“Non-negotiables (max 4).” The cap is the feature. Lists of twelve must-haves are really lists of zero, and they collapse on the first charming house. Four forces the real conversation: bedroom count? commute ceiling? level lot? quiet street? Everything that doesn’t make the four goes in nice-to-haves — wantable, but not worth an escalation increment.

“Offer rules.” This section exists because offer night is the worst possible time to decide anything. Your escalation cap rule, which contingencies you’ll keep, and the conditions under which you’d pre-inspect or waive should all be decided here, generically, then applied per-house using the pre-offer checklist for Seattle buyers — that’s the homework layer (sewer scope, resale cert, comps) this plan assumes you’ll do on each specific property. The blank after “we go in clean only if” is allowed to say never. That’s a strategy, not a weakness.

“Walk-away lines.” Write them as tripwires, not feelings: a number, a named inspection finding (foundation movement, full re-pipe, failed sewer lateral), a payment ceiling. The point of the “no debate” framing is that the debate already happened — here, on this page, when you were calm. The gut-check checkbox is there because some houses are worth stretching for, and the plan should make you say so out loud and in advance rather than discover it mid-auction.

“Team.” Filling in the agent line means choosing one — and that line has a fee blank on purpose, because since the NAR settlement era you’ll sign a written agreement stating what your agent costs, and you should know the market before you sign. Manaky Homes exists for exactly that blank: a free marketplace where Greater Seattle agents publish their fees side by side. Join the waitlist and fill in the fee field from data instead of folklore.

Why one page beats a binder

A plan you can see all at once is a plan you can hold each other to. The binder version — spreadsheets, saved searches, twelve tabs — is useful homework, but under deadline nobody consults a binder; they consult their adrenaline. One page, posted on the fridge, signed by both buyers, is the antidote: when the perfect house asks you to break three of your own rules, the page doesn’t argue. It just sits there, in your own handwriting, asking who you’d rather disappoint — the listing agent, or the two people who signed it.

Fill it in this weekend. The market can have you next weekend.

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