Sometime shortly after my 30th birthday, I woke up realizing that I had to write a rent check that morning. And I was pissed.

Maybe it was the realization that, at age 30, I had probably already lived a third of my life. Maybe it was the realization that I was finally on track to a decent career in a city where I’d made a lot of connections, and the subsequent realization that the desire to nest had replaced the wanderlust of my younger years. Whatever the reason, I woke up that morning mad as hell that I was paying rent to a landlord, instead of being that landlord, or, at the very least, owning my own place.

My sisters, both homeowners in Northern New England, advised me that there were two things in life that one was never really ready for, but that you just had to buck up and do: buying a home and having kids. I trusted my sisters on half of their advice, and now, four years later, my wife and I are the proud owners of a lovely, bouncing baby condo in Somerville. Now when I wake up on the first of each month, I am no longer mad; rather, I’m pleased to write a mortgage check.

So where to start on the daunting road to homeownership? It’s true that when my wife and I began searching for a home, we were most certainly not experienced enough to know exactly what we were doing. But we forged ahead and learned on the fly. We asked our homeowner friends, we perused countless Web sites, we read books and magazine articles, and, perhaps most important, we started to look at hundreds of properties, attending 10 or more open houses — sometimes for properties that we knew were far, far out of our price range — each and every weekend. We were determined to know the market, even if we didn’t know much else.

The first thing any prospective homeowner must do is to figure out how much he or she can spend. Almost any mortgage company will pre-approve you for a loan over the phone. This information is useful as a rough guideline, but it’s instructive to keep in mind that mortgage companies are in the game to make money, and they stand to make the most money by having their clients take the largest loan possible. So being pre-approved for a loan doesn’t mean you can really afford to spend that much; nor does it mean that you are pre-qualified for a loan (which is to say, that a bank will actually loan you that amount). It can get confusing, yes, but a pre-approval carries virtually no weight or obligation, while a pre-qualification means that a bank has actually gone through all your paperwork and is prepared to loan you a specific amount when you finally find the right place.

The process of pre-qualifying for a loan is arduous, and entails more paperwork than a decade of tax returns. Mortgage applications force you to become organized, which in turn can shed some much-needed light on your actual financial situation. A typical mortgage lender will ask for prior tax returns, credit reports, bank statements, investment statements, college-loan information, car-loan status, a previous year’s worth of cancelled rent checks, paycheck stubs, etc. While getting all that information together can be a hassle, it can also be a revelation finally to see your financial truth placed in front of you. It can also be pretty scary.

One truth immediately becomes clear: you need to have a chunk of money saved. You need money to put down on a property, you need money for closing costs (which are usually about four percent of the purchase price, as a rule) and/or a lawyer, you need money for homeowner’s insurance (and life insurance, if you’re going in with a spouse or partner), and you’ll probably want some money set aside in an emergency fund. When you own a property and the roof collapses, or the hot-water heater kicks, or the basement floods (and you’d better believe I’m knocking on wood as I write this), there is no landlord to bail you out. The money for repairs comes directly from your own pocket. This is an obvious truth, but a truth you must plan for nonetheless.

Another factor in the buying equation is how many units you want to purchase. If you buy a three-family home and live in one unit, you have the rental income (provided you can rent the units) to help offset your own costs. It’s important to consider your skills as a handyperson when making this decision. If you feel like a kid in a candy store when you’re in Home Depot, then chances are you have enough rudimentary carpentry/plumbing/home-improvement skills to take on additional units. But if you find yourself rummaging through the tool chest looking for an MC Hammer, then you should probably go with just one unit, since even the smallest professional repairs and improvements can set you back thousands of dollars.

What you’ve got in your toolbox is also a factor when determining whether you want to look at cheaper " fixer-uppers. " Buyers can often save a great deal of money by purchasing a place that needs improvements, provided they have the skills to do at least some of the improvements themselves. There are people out there who make a living buying old, rundown homes, spending a year or so refinishing them, and then selling them at a great profit. The place my wife and I bought had been renovated by a husband-and-wife team who came in and lived in the house for a year while they redid the kitchens and bathrooms, refinished the floors, painted the walls, put in some nice lighting fixtures, paved the driveway, etc. They put their time in, but they also made a pretty penny.

If you’ve made it this far into this article, you’re probably serious enough about the home-buying process to know that interest rates are incredibly low right now. Even though the economy is down, these rates make it a very good time to buy property. A home is an investment, and so, like most solid investments, you need to look at its value over the long haul. I would not recommend buying now if you’re planning on moving in the next few years, because there’s no guarantee that in the short term you’ll be able to sell the property for what you paid for it. Rents will always increase with inflation and increased demand (our population is continually rising at an alarming rate); fixed mortgages, however, will stay the same for their duration, which is usually 30 years. Also, in this tough economy, the tax breaks of being a first-time buyer can be appealing: you can deduct your property taxes and interest on your mortgage. If you can find the money, a tough financial climate can be a great time to buy.

The things I’ve covered so far — familiarizing yourself with the market, getting your finances in order, saving a nice chunk of money, and determining what type of home you’re looking for — are all things you can and should do on your own. Then there comes a time when you have to decide whether you want to affiliate yourself with a real-estate agent. The advantage of working with a good agent is that he or she knows the business inside and out, and can offer great advice on how to get what you want. Obviously, the danger is that a seemingly good real-estate agent can be a rat in sheep’s clothing — a rat who can cost you tens of thousands of dollars with the quick stroke of a pen. My wife and I bought our condo without the services of an agent, but we also got lucky in that the place we eventually bought was sold directly by the owners, and not through an agent. With the help of a good lawyer, we were able to get a deal that we could live with, without paying an agent anything.

Most agents use the Multiple Listings Service (MLS) to learn about new properties, and potential buyers can subscribe to this service, with no cost or obligation, through any number of real-estate agencies. Of course, agents do more than feed you listings. A good real-estate agent, should you find one, leads buyers through the entire process, from open houses to signing on the dotted line at the closing. If you decide to work independently, check out www.isoldmyhouse.com, a great resource that lists properties available from people selling their own homes. Should first-time buyers choose to go without a real-estate agent, however, I strongly suggest working with a trustworthy lawyer who has a lot of real-estate experience.

Finally, we come to the mortgage itself. The two main types of mortgages are fixed rate and adjustable rate. The terms here are fairly self-defining: a fixed-rate mortgage has the same interest rate for the duration of the loan, which is usually 30 years. An adjustable-rate mortgage (ARM) has an interest rate that fluctuates with the market. Somewhere between the two is what’s called an intermediate (or fixed-adjustable) mortgage, in which the rate is fixed for a specified amount of time (usually three, five, or seven years), and then becomes adjustable for the remaining life of the loan. These intermediate loans often have very low interest rates at the start, because the lender assumes that they’ll make up some money when the market (and therefore the interest rate of the mortgage) inevitably rises in the future. However, if you think you might be in your home for only those three, five, or seven years, these mortgages can be a great option thanks to their relatively low initial interest rates. Even if you stay longer, most of these intermediate loans have caps, where the amount the interest rate can rise or fall (in accordance with market conditions in the adjustable phase) is limited to two or so percentage points.

Whew! Trust me when say I fully comprehend how overwhelming all this information can be; my wife and I went through the process recently. But as hard as it was, owning a home has been indescribably satisfying for us. Reading this supplement should be just part of your education. Get out there and talk to people who’ve purchased a home, and, most important, read the newspapers to find out when and where the open houses are — and then get yourself to them. Knowing a property’s relative worth is the only way you can protect yourself from spending too much for it. And, if you’re like me, it’s the first step toward not waking up angry the day your rent is due.

Scott Kathan can be reached at skathan[a]phx.com