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Originally Posted by rthomet
My fiance and I will be getting married in August and would like to buy a home once we are married. So we would be looking to buy in August or shortly beforehand.
My question is when should we go and get aproved for a loan so we can find out how much money we can borrow for a home? How far in advance of the actual purchase should we get this done? I hear it dings your credit everytime they check it so I dont want to do it several times just to find out what they will give us in terms of a loan.
Any ideas?
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Here is a realtors prospective:
You should get started as soon as you realize buying a house is what you want to do. You might be surprised at how easy it is. Really the key is to do it the first time just to know what your payments would be for a certain price so you know where to start looking.
Here is how I would go about it
Have the first loan guy run your credit, get a copy of it because its good for six months.
Let him figer out what you should put on the app to get the best loan. There are a lot of programs out there but most are looking at the same thing.
Get a good faith estimate too. This is a brake down of all the closing costs including monthly payments, taxes, and fees. A good faith insures that you wont get your loan switched on you when you are at the closing table a common thing called baiting and switching. Also you can compare loan guys with a good faith. be loyal to the original guy by asking him to match rates. Ask the next guy to meet or beat type of thing. There are a few negocated fees in there. Also with a copy of your recent credit report in hand you wont get dinged for credit checks.
Now you know how much you can afford, time for the shopping. finding a house then finding the loan can be very disappointing