So you think that you're ready to buy your own home? Hopefully you've done a little research online to make your first home buying experience a good one. First of all you should contact a mortgage broker that will preapprove you for your new mortgage. This is now more important than ever. It's also important that once you receive a preapproval you get busy right away looking for your new home. The reasoning for this is that with the mortgage meltdown lenders are changing their lending programs as quickly as Paris Hilton changes her boyfriends. Scary, huh?
At this point you will let the mortgage broker now how much you would like to get preapproved for. The broker will then take a full mortgage loan application. The mortgage broker will also run your credit. With all this information in hand the mortgage broker will see if you have enough income for the price of the home that you would like to purchase. If you can't get approved for the full amount that you wanted the mortgage broker will let you know how much you are approved for on your new home. You will have to chose the term of mortgage that you want such as 30 or 15 yr. Most borrowers these days are staying away from adjustable rate mortgages like the plague. The interest rates on the adjustable rate mortgages are not much lower than fixed rates so these days chose a fixed rate and be done with it. At this point the mortgage broker will also make sure that you have enough funds to close on the loan.
You will not be able to lock in your interest rate until you have found your new property and obtained a signed sales contract.
Once you have found your new home you will fax the signed sales contract to your broker who will submit your loan application to the lender. At this time you will also need to provide 1 months worth of paystubs, last years W-2, bank statements showing funds to close plus at least 2 months of reserves, a copy of your drivers license. Then the package is off to the lender. The lender will approve the loan within 2-3 days depending upon how busy they are. At that time there are usually an item or two more that you may have to provide. These can include an insurance binder for homeowners insurance, flood insurance or anything else that the bank may have a question on.
You should have final approval and a clear to close within 1-2 weeks after submitting your loan to the lender. If it is taking longer than that you may want to check with your broker to see if there are any concerns or issues that you should know about. You really want to be proactive on the purchase of your new home. You don't want to get to the day of closing and have your purchase cancelled.
Follow these tips and you should close your loan and enjoy your beautiful new home.
Sandra Sheely is President of First Financial Mortgage, Inc. in Sunrise, FL. She has been in the Real Estate Industry for 12 years with experience in the mortgage industry and title industry. She has a couple of Mortgage websites. http://www.ffinancialmortgage.com and http://www.lowestraterefi.com
She writes a mortgage blog her mortgage websites. She has a credit repair website at http://firstfinancial.fixcreditbiz.com/
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