Saturday, March 18, 2017

What's Up

One day when hubby and I were looking at houses online, I clicked on one of those "Get pre-approved" buttons and filled out the form. I instantly got a call from Quicken Loans.

Buying a house requires lots of homework. I am a former homeowner, but that was 3 years ago. Both hubby and I qualify as first time home buyers with 1% down. Our credit rating is above the requirement. Our income to debt ratio is excellent. We don't have 20% in the bank. 3% is more like it. Pre-approval is not the same as actually having a letter in hand. We will need to wait and see what they actually approve us for.

Enter the homework, Aside from the obvious gathering of documents, there is the question of what lender do we trust, who has the best deal, how to find a good realtor.

In the meantime, we do not:

  • Change jobs or quit a job or become self-employed
  • Open a new charge card
  • Take out a loan
  • Buy anything major like a car or furniture
  • Make any late payments
  • Open a new bank account
  • Originate inquiries into our credit
  • Co-sign a loan
  • Spend money set aside for closing


The exciting part is that we are probably much closer to buying a home than we thought.