What are the first steps in buying a home?
So, you are interested in buying your first home, but don’t know where to begin? Here is a helpful guide to get started.
The first step is to get pre-approved. This involves giving us a call around 3-6 months before you intend on purchasing the home.
This is to prevent any surprises that might come up, either in the credit report, or due to income, etc. Even if you aren’t ready to buy at this time, we can come up with a plan to help you become a homeowner in the near future.
Here are some of the things that we can go over with you, to help you prepare for a home purchase. We can:
· Go over different home values that you would be able to afford given a specific down payment at this time.
· Find a home value where the monthly payment would be comfortable for you to make. (For instance, how much home you could acquire with a $1200 a month payment.)
· Get you pre-approved to buy a home.
This last part is important.
Even if you aren’t yet ready to buy, a home just yet, we can assist you in getting your credit and finances ready for when you want to move forward. A pre-approval letter allows you to put an offer on a home, backed by the guarantee of the mortgage broker and lets real-estate agents take you more seriously.
There are certain requirements to get pre-approved, you will usually need to have your credit checked, which means that you will need to give them info such as birthdays, social security numbers, and the address of the borrower, or both borrowers if there is more than one.
At Evergreen, we like to go one step further with automated underwriting. We can run your information through Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac’s systems and they can give us a decision right then. Now we have to back it up with an appraisal and other things, but 95% of the time we get approval on the automated underwrite, we get approval on the loan. This is just another layer of protection for you, the consumer.
