So you’ve come to the decision or conclusion that you need to find a new home. Maybe it’s your first home. Maybe you’ve outgrown your current home. Maybe you wish or need to relocate across town, across several towns, or across states. There are any number of reasons that you find yourself on the hunt for a new home.
But wait! Before you start the actual house hunt, you need to prepare.
Step 1: Contact a mortgage lender to begin the pre approval process as soon as possible. You can’t truly start home shopping without attaining a pre approval letter. Through this process, you will also determine many key components of what type of home you will be looking for and the timing of it. What is your budget? What type of loan will you be using? Will you need to sell a current home before purchasing the next? etc.
It is important to note that a genuine preapproval, one that will be required to submit as part of an offer to purchase, will clearly state that assess, income and credit have been verified. Meaning that you actually submit documentation to your loan consultant in order to obtain the pre approval letter. It is not based on information that you provide verbally over the phone or figures that you simply fill into an online form without supplying supporting documentation such as W2s, bank statements, and authorize a credit report be run.
As your agent, you don’t have to disclose many details of your personal credit history or finances to me. But I implore you to disclose these things to your loan consultant. Don’t try to hide anything. Because the underwriters will uncover it. The more honest and open you are with your loan consultant from the beginning, the better prepared they will be to help put you in the best position for a quick and clean approval process. The loan consultant is working for you, to present you and your documents as a pretty little package to the underwriters behind the scenes who make the loan approvals.
You may choose to “shop around” for lenders, but in doing so, make sure you are not just shopping interest rates, because those can change from day to day. And some lenders exchange lower rates for higher fees. Some lenders fully disclose all estimated costs and fees up front that will be due at closing. Some lenders conveniently leave a few details out during the initial phases. And some lenders participate in down payment assistance programs and have a very diversified portfolio of loans types they service and some do not. Be sure to shop smart and compare apples to apples. I would be happy to introduce you to our in-house lender with Moving The Mitten Mortgage Group.
If during this step you find that you aren’t quite able to get preapproved due to current credit score or finances, I encourage you to check out this post: Credit and Financial Wellness Resources
Step 2: Determine exactly what you are looking for in your next home. Make it a couple or family discussion if applicable. Determine your lines between “whats” and “needs” in a home. With such limited inventory of properties for sale, it is a good idea to keep your options as open as possible, because the more restrictive you make your search, the fewer options that will appears. When in fact, sometimes what you might first consider a need is actually determined to be a want when everything else about the house makes your heart scream “this is home”. For instance, some people say that they MUST have central air…but more than once, I’ve seen families let go of that as a need when they find the otherwise perfect house with baseboard heat and no AC. Then it turns into them exploring the future purchase of new air conditioning options. It is wonderful to have a specific picture of what your perfect home will be comprised of, and I want you to describe that to me so I can be in tune with how each property might match up to your dreams. But when it comes to actually searching, I encourage you to keep your mind open, keep your search to few restrictions and see how things fall into place. Feel free to use this worksheet to guide your discussion.
Step 3: Get connected with a buyer’s agent, such as myself, (they can also work as your listing agent if you have a home to sell). Share with them all the details and results of Step 1 and Step 2 above and get ready to begin the hunt.
Of course, I hope you will choose that agent to be me 🙂
Happy House Hunting!
