What information and paperwork should someone have when house-hunting? When house hunting it helps to know your credit score and your mortgage rate. You should know what your credit score is. You should...
You should know what your credit score is. You should have a list of all your credit cards and the addresses that you send things to. They are going to have to verify your income and you have to think about if you have other sources of income, because sometimes they can talk about those. When they verify your income they are going to ask is it likely you are going to be in this position for another period of time; ever change job from the time you make your application to when you close on your house, and do not take out another credit card, do not buy a car, do not put a deposit down on furniture. Do not change anything you can do five minutes after closing.
An hour before you have closing the lender will run a check on you. It happened this morning; somebody went out and bought a Mercedes because they liked this Mercedes that the salesman was driving. So they went out and bought it, well they didn't pay cash, and when they became indebted for $30,000, then that threw out their debt income ratio so they couldn't buy the house because they didn't qualify for the loan. So if they would have waited until an hour after closing, once the papers are signed you can go out and borrow as much money as you want to; just don't do it before.
A rule of thumb traditionally has been if you take one-fourth of your gross income that would be like your monthly payment. You really have to look at is the monthly payment and decide if you are comfortable with it, and then how much savings you have. The chances are you aren't going to have a down payment. You are going to be looking for almost no money down and you can do that as long as you are aware of what the monthly payment will be.
