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4 Simple Steps to Speed Up Your Mortgage Process |
The home buying process can be painfully
slow. Doing "drive-bys," going to open
houses, and scheduling appointments can drag
on for months - even years. There is no
perfect house. One home may have everything
you want, but no garage and or master bath.
Another home may be in a great location, but
is too small and has no room to add on. And
then of course there is the "perfect" house
that is too expensive.
If you are like most of my clients, once you
find that perfect home, you want it now. You
don't want to have to wade through stacks of
paperwork when you're anxious about
inspections, closing dates, and showings. But
there is this little thing called "the bank"
that enters the picture, and there is no way
you can have that new house without it. The
bank wants to know more about your personal
life than your primary care physician.
With a bit of preparation, you can speed up
the loan process so you're ready when you
find the perfect home.
- Get pre-approved. Before you even
head
out to open houses, have a good, solid idea
not only what you can afford each month, but
what you will get approval for from a bank.
Remember that the two can be dramatically
different. What a bank is comfortable loaning
you may be a lot more than you are
comfortable spending each month and vice
versa. However, the right mortgage broker
will be able to help you figure out what you
can and cannot afford. Knowing ahead of time
if you can jump up to a different price range
will be extremely helpful if you don't what
you are seeing. The mortgage company will
contact your employer and make sure you have
all the necessary information and are ready
to go. If two parties are bidding on a house
and one is pre-approved and the other is not,
the smart seller will go with the one who is
pre-approved.
- Have all your documents ready to
go. The
paperwork necessary to get a bank to hand
over hundreds of thousands of dollars is
enough to make any procrastinator dizzy. To
get yourself started, be sure you have:
- Past few years of addresses
- Past two years of W-2s
- Employment information for past two
years
- Bank and investment information (names,
account numbers, etc.)
- All income information
- Debt information (how much you owe to
credit cards, student loans, car loans)
- Don't be a stranger to your real estate
agent and mortgage broker. If the night your
offer on a home is accepted is the first time
your real estate agent mentions the term
"mortgage" to you, you're in for a longer
wait than necessary. Keep in contact with the
professionals so that everyone is on the same
page, and can easily be able to help
you.
- Know what you can afford. Allow me to
use one of my client's experiences as a
cautionary tale. When she and her husband
were looking around for a house in the
$750,000 to $800,000 range, they continued to
be outbid. A real estate insider told them
that there were 40 families in their city
looking in the same price range. My client
and her husband decided to "peek" at what was
available if they went up a little over
$825,000. They snapped up the first house
they saw at $825,000 and are still feeling
the pinch of a big mortgage payment five
years later.
Shopping for and buying a house is an
emotional process. When houses are so
expensive, it can seem casual to throw around
terms like "just another $100,000." But,
remember that no matter how much a house cost
relative to another house, the price you pay
still comes out of your bank account every week.
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May's Home Value Improver |
5 Easy Steps to Make Your Home More
Environmentally Friendly
Yes, I purposely left the word "green" out of
this headline. You are probably tired of
hearing about "green this" and "green that."
Instead, I just want to share five easy steps
to making your home more environmentally
friendly. After all, we humans are organic
creatures and deserve to live a good life.
- Light the Way! Perhaps the
easiest step you can take when trying to save
energy in your home is changing your light
bulbs to the energy efficient ones. They are
more expensive than traditional light bulbs,
but experts say that one energy efficient
light bulb can save up to $100 per year. You
can find these in any hardware or grocery
store. Speaking of which, I hate to sound
like your dad, but turn the lights off when
you leave a room! Get your family trained to
do the same. One client's father used to come
home and say: "This place is lit up like Las
Vegas," when someone would leave the light
on. Let the lights of Vegas stay in Vegas,
and shut them off.
- Compost your food waste. If you
are like a lot of people, joining the "green"
movement was easy when it meant simply
tossing your papers and cans into a different
bin. Wouldn't saving food scraps be messy and
complicated? Not really. While a google
search for "composting" will provide you with
links for hundreds of sites that tell you how
best to compost, don't make it harder than it
needs to be. Just toss your food scraps
(especially coffee grounds, tea, and
vegetable peelings) in a bin on your counter
during the day, and dump it into the compost
bin at the end of the day. That's it. You
don't have to do anything else. The food will
just turn into compost, and you can empty it
twice a year or so, and just toss it in your
garden or flower beds.
- Keep the temps regulated. Almost
half of your home's energy costs come from
heating and cooling it. Keep your furnace
filter clean, keep the temps at a reasonable
rate, and shade your house as much as
possible in the heat.
- Reuse bags. You can buy reusable
bags for the grocery store or other retail
locations for about $1. They not only help
you spare the environment, they also save you
the hassle of collecting all those crinkly
bags, and many of the reusable ones are easy
to throw over your shoulder.
- Cut out the chemical cleaners. The
ingredients in many household cleaners seem
to freak out the environmental crowd. Could
they be on to something? Apparently, a lot of
these cleaners can be pretty toxic. If you
are so inclined, do a google search for
"making your own household cleaners," and you
will save money, reduce your cleaning product
costs, and feel oh-so virtuous at the same
time!
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I'm in the potty training trenches with my daughter,
Hannah, and I'm learning a lot that - believe it or not! -
relates to the process of financing a real estate
purchase.
First, these things take time. You have to lay the
groundwork, create a strategy and get the information
you
need to implement it successfully. Do the necessary
homework and your likelihood of success will
increase.
Second, you need a strong team of supporters. Just
like you need a team of financial advisors you can
trust when financing real estate, you also need a team
you can trust when potty training. If your spouse,
childcare provider and grandparents are not on the
same page, your efforts can be stymied significantly.
Finally, you have to control what you can and let the
rest go. Hannah will train when she's good and ready,
when the time is right for her. Likewise, a successful
real estate investment will come to fruition when all
the pieces fall into place and the time is right for all
involved.
When I'm not doling out "good job" stickers in the
bathroom with Hannah, I am available and happy to
answer any of your mortgage-related questions.
Best regards,
Debbie Siegel
President
Westchester Mortgage
P.S. You're receiving this E-Newsletter because you have a prior relationship with me or with Westchester Mortgage. If I've sent this to you in error, or if you want to remove yourself from the list at any time, just click the "SafeUnsubscribe" link at the bottom of this e-mail.
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