Deciding to buy your first home is an exciting, gut-wrenching, thrilling and terrifying experience. Often, first time home buyers can go through all of those emotions in one afternoon! Please read this article if you fit into one of the following groups of people:
- You are considering buying your first home
- You have decided for sure that you are going to buy a home within the next 6 months
- You are waiting for the market to bottom out before you buy
Now that you have put yourself into a category, lets talk about the first baby steps to take regarding the loan process.
All home purchases begin and end with the mortgage loan paperwork. While the most emotional focus is on the home selection process itself, the real process of buying your house is in the paperwork. Lets face it, if you find the perfect house at the perfect price, it won’t matter at all if you can’t get your loan closed!
So, what should you know as you undertake the project of buying your first house?
The first thing that you’ll want to educate yourself on (long before you find the house that you want to buy) is your credit worthiness. You can obtain a copy of your credit report for free once a year, or better yet, chose the best mortgage loan officer and let them work with you to make sure that you can qualify for your house. There are several thing to keep in mind as you consider you report.
- Make note of any inaccuracies
- Take care that there are no payments 30 days late in the last year
- Keep credit balances to less than 50% of original debt
Often times, your credit report has problems that can easily be fixed, if you know that there is a problem. You’ll save yourself a lot of head aches if you find the errors and fix them before you need to close your loan.
The next thing to consider well before you are ready to go out house shopping is your savings account. As you probably know, nearly all loans require a down payment from personal or gifted funds. Usually 4-7% of the purchase price is a good amount to shoot for to have in your savings before you buy a house.
If you consider these 2 areas well before buying time, you’ll have a much easier time qualifying for a house when the time comes.