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The True Story of How I Got A Great Mortgage
A simple strategy to get a great mortgage deal...
So I knew I needed about $90,000. I had no money to put down and I was a first time homebuyer. My agent recommended a mortgage broker affiliated with her agency, but before I just accepted them as my lender I did some comparison shopping. There are quite a few options, but I have had success with particular online mortgage lenders.
You should try LendingTree Mortgage Loans and a few others. They are not hidden, search Google and see what you can find. The point here is not for you to get a mortgage online, it's so that you will get a quote that you can take back to your local lender to persuade them to cut fees and give you a lower rate.
I have some more info on my links page about the mortagage lender I used.
So that's what I did. You should never accept the first quote! When lenders offer you a mortgage they give you a balance sheet that tells you estimates of what your total costs will be and what your monthly payments might be. Collect as many of these as you can, because they will only assist you when working with your preferred lender.
In the end, I went with the local lender affiliated with my agent because they were providing me excellent service and I really liked my agent and her company. But if they had been unable to match the deals I found online, I would have quickly dropped them.
One more tip: I kept a folder of copies of all my financial information that I would need to apply for the mortgage. Driver's license, social security card, W-2s and copies of my tax returns, and check stubs for the past few years. They also wanted bank statements. Every time I got a quote I just re-used the documents from my collection.. I really streamlined the process, and could get all the documents to a lender very quickly after they requested them. I'm keeping this stash of documents, too.. undoubtedly it will be useful in the future.
As a first time homebuyer I qualified for an FHA loan. I should mention that my credit score is in the mid 600s - which happens to be well below average (check your Fico Scores/Reports free). The FHA loan came with a really good interest rate, but required a 3% down payment.. uh oh... Even if I got an 80/20 loan or another jumbo mortgage I probably would have had to put a lot down...
$90,000 x 3% = $2700
+ closing costs of about $3000 =
about $6000 out-of-pocket????
I had no cash. I had to figure something out.
Read on for the rest of the story. Next up I'll tell you about my negotiations with the seller...
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I am not a real estate agent, a mortgage broker or an attorney. This is a true story, but your experiences may be different.
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