What to do when you're years away from buying a house
Even if you are years away from buying a home, I believe it’s never too early to start preparing for buying your home. The sooner you start and the more advise you receive, the better off you’ll be when the time comes and you find the right house.
Get advise about how to accomplish your goals
Talk to a lender first. Pick their brain, tell them your goals, ask what you can be doing to reach those goals. They may tell you to save for a specific down payment amount, pay off credit cards, or improve credit. They can give you tangible things to do that will improve credit. One of my lenders was so creative with a buyer of mine that they improved their credit just by moving around funds between credit cards- the buyer didn’t even have to pay them off!
Talk to the right Lender
A mediocre lender will brush you off when they hear you don’t want to buy a house for several more years because it’s not an immediate sale to them, but a great lender will give you advise and help you plan out how to make it happen. The lender can also tell you about any down payment assistance programs available and when they may end. A 15k down payment assistance program happened a couple years ago in Charlotte and they warned us it would end soon and then it did, and now there’s an 8k program, so lenders can tell you what’s available now and what might be in the future.
Understand Interest Rates
Lenders can also talk to you about what interest rates are now and what they might be in the future. Interest rates make a huge difference in your monthly payment. You can also play around on mortgagecalculator.com with today’s average interest rate (about 4.5) vs if it increases to 5.5 (which it’s trending upward right now). Something a lot of buyers forget about is that you don’t live with your purchase price, you live with your monthly payment, so anything that can affect that should be considered if it’s worth buying sooner or later.
So how do you find the best Lender? Your local Realtor will have the best connections since they work with so many different lenders and banks. If you are in Charlotte NC I’d love to put you in contact with my client’s favorite lenders. Not in the Charlotte area? Let me connect you with a great Realtor near you!
