Anyone involved with the world of real estate including little ol’ Salem Oregon knows that lending is a pain in the behind for many folks. Working with good mortgage brokers is essential these days or buyers risk spending a lot of money on home inspections and appraisals only to have deals fall through.
I know I want my buyers to talk to a good lender and have their ducks in a row before house hunting. I can’t imagine anything worse than falling in love with a house only to find out you can’t get it. If you are a first time home buyer, you need to get your ducks in a row BEFORE you start to hunt for homes. Sometimes you have things on your credit report that don’t really belong to you that impact your credit.
If you need to know who some good local mortgage brokers are, just shoot me an email and I’ll give you some names, but here is what you want to do to start getting ready…
- If you have recently moved here from another state get your Oregon driver’s license and make sure it has a current address.
- Social Security Card. Yes, they will request your social security number and run them. If you don’t have a real social security number then it will be found out during this process when they are “unable to verify” the social. My seller got some earnest money on that buyer snafu. Don’t lie on mortgage applications. That’s fraud.
- Pay stubs. If you normally send these to the recycling bin, don’t. You will need them.
- Bank Statements. You will need copies of a recent bank statement so same deal, don’t send these to the round file.
- Work. I know this seems like an odd one, but you need to have a solid work history with no to few gaps in jobs. FHA especially wants to see a solid two year work history.
- Pay your rent. You need to have at least one-year rental history for most loans and they’ll want proof. So pay by check so you have proof of payment.
In case you were wondering how to shoot yourself in the foot during the home buying process and lose a house…
- Quit your job. People naturally get laid off during the home buying process, but for Pete’s sake (oh man, I just sounded like my mother…) please don’t voluntarily quit your job. A buyer did this to one of my seller clients one time and it delayed the process for three weeks. You can’t get a loan without a job. Seriously they stopped doing that a couple of years ago now…Lenders want at least one paycheck from your new job so DON’T QUIT if you want a house.
- Forget to show me the money. Okay, it’s weird for people to suddenly dump a large sum of money in their checking account outside normal pay. If you transfer funds from an investment account just keep the paper trail. Banks don’t want to give buyers loans based on drug money. Paper trails=happy underwriters.
- Buy things. I can’t tell you how many sad stories I hear about people who bought some new furniture for their “new” house only to find out that financing the furniture changed their debt to income ratio and they no longer qualified for the house. Seriously…don’t buy anything extra during the home buying process.
Buying a house can be stressful with all of the crazy lending changes. Having a good mortgage broker and a good Salem Oregon real estate agent (cough, cough…we are talking about me here, you know) working with you can help to minimize the stress in this crazy real estate environment.