You’ve Been Preapproved for a Mortgage Loan! | Mistakes to Avoid
You’ve just been pre-approved for a mortgage, Congratulations!! Below are some tips and pitfalls to avoid to ensure a smooth transaction when you do find your home and have your offer accepted.
CREDIT –
As you search for your next home, you may also be in the midst of imagining new furniture or appliances that will personalize the house. You are already in that “buying” mode, but please be cautious about making any large purchases. Many stores will offer you discounts on furniture and appliances if you apply for store credit or “buy now” to get a great sale price. Making any major purchase at this time takes money or credit, and your mortgage approval was based on a certain set of criteria by your lender, such as debt-to-income ratio, cash reserves, assets, etc. Changing those in any way could jeopardize your loan qualification, especially if you are depleting reserves and savings that are slated to be used for buying your new home.
Important credit tips to keep in mind –
1. Don’t close any accounts
2. Don’t co-sign for any loans
3. Make sure to make all payments on time
ASSETS –
When you applied for your loan, you probably recall the fun you had uploading all of your documents, like income, proof of employment, assets, etc.
One set of documents you had to provide was your bank statements. When you get your offer accepted, your lender will likely request updated documentation including your bank statements for the last two months. The main reason is to verify that you have the funds needed for a down payment and closing costs. They will also want to see that your assets have been sourced and seasoned. Sourced means that they can determine where the money came from. Seasoned means that the assets have b
een in your account for a certain length of time.
Two things to keep in mind –
1. Don’t change banks – If you change bank accounts, it may become difficult to source the funds to close if you no longer have access to those accounts.
2. Keep movement of assets to a minimum – If it’s unavoidable, that is understandable but keep in mind that your funds to close and reserves have to be sourced for 60 days and any accounts used to transfer funds will get pulled into the file. This could create a lot of headaches when it comes to the “paper trail” of where all of the funds came from.
The best advice with assets, is to keep the funds that you are planning to use for your down payment and closing costs in a single account with very little activity.
The goal is to make your purchase as seamless and stress free as possible and minimizing the number of accounts used in your file will go a long way to making your transaction easy and fun!
If you have any questions about the mortgage process or if you want to inquire about getting preapproved, please contact:
Faramarz Moeen-Ziai
CrossCountry Mortgage, LLC
2987 College Ave
Berkeley, CA 94705
Personal NMLS342090 Branch NMLS2020284
Company NMLS3029
Client Success Story – Sarah K.
“I would give Faramarz 10 stars, if I could! From start to finish Faramarz made my matter a priority and to say that he provided great service is a complete understatement. We had an unusually complicated deal and he relentlessly worked every possible angle to get us a fantastic loan, to make sure that we got it done, and, importantly, managed the whole situation so that all parties remained calm and happy. Knowing that I was in the hands of an experienced pro, I could simply relax and let him handle everything, which he did with aplomb. Faramarz was always available to take my call and patiently and thoroughly answered any questions I had and usually made me laugh during the process. CrossCountry’s process was transparent and easy to navigate, the team was friendly and the pricing and fees were fantastic. On top of all that, Faramarz made our deal his deal, starting with the fact that after our initial call he stayed up past midnight to turn around approval to write an offer that was due the next day. I know he would have done whatever was needed to get our loan closed. Fortunately, he worked through all of our challenges and an absolutely massive underwriting queue and we ended up with the house of our dreams and a fantastic rate. Just as we were closing a friend mentioned that she had the world’s best mortgage broker and I responded that was impossible, since I knew I had the world’s best mortgage broker–after some friendly arguing back and forth it turned out we were both right because we were both working with Faramarz! This guy is that awesome!”
