April is upon us and that brings thought of flowers, rain showers and warmer days ahead...unless you're in the real estate industry or need to buy a home...in that case, spring brings thoughts of For Sale signs, Open Houses, #relocation letters and, in the case of military families all over Canada who are receiving posting letters, #HHT's.
Whether you plan to buy down the road from your current home, or across the country, where do you start? Ask any realtor in the country and any #mortgage broker and we're all going to give you the same advice...start with a #PREAPPROVAL!!
Benefits to that are three fold:
Knowing your budget ahead of time
Avoiding any hiccups on the journey to buying a home
Rate hold in a rising rate environment
Budget
Nothing worse than walking through a home, falling in love, and then finding out you can't afford to buy it. Trust me, every other house will then fall short of the one that got away. How do you avoid this? Know ahead of time what your budget is.
We will work together to figure out where your comfortable monthly payments are in comparison to house prices, and what that means to your maximum purchase price and down payment combination. Are there calculators on the internet you can use to "figure that out"? Yes, but they suck.
They don't take into account your property taxes, your heating bills, your lenders preferred debt repayment requirements on Lines of Credit, or the fact that you entered your car payment as a monthly amount but you pay biweekly so it's actually higher than you estimated. Use a professional! This is literally what I do 40-60 hours/week, so I obviously recommend ME! #expertadvice
Hiccups
What do I mean by hiccups? Here's an example: Lenders have specific guidelines for what type and amount of income they'll use. Again, the calculator that you entered last years T4 $$ of 80K a year and it pumped out a "preapproval"? Yeah, it sucks. Because in reality, when you go to hand in your paystub & letter of employment and it shows you're only guaranteed half of that amount by your employer, and your T4 for 2 years ago is from a different employer, suddenly you're in a panic because your that bank won't use a 2 year average when you've only been there for one year. See what I'm getting at here? Use a professional!! Getting a preapproval with me means we know that ahead of time. We address those issues up front and use the right numbers. In this case, I can likely use a 2 year average because I have access to many lenders products, not just one banks in house products. #mortgagebrokeradvantage
Rate Hold
Rate holds vary for lenders. Most are NOT reviewed in detail unless you have an offer on a home, but a mortgage broker understands the approval guidelines and can reassure you of your approval so you can go out and make an offer on a home with some confidence. Confident buyers leads to confident sellers, which leads to accepted offers.
Rate holds are usually held for 90 - 120 days at a rate slightly above current market rates. Then when you find a property, your contract will be written at that rate or the new current market rate, whichever is lower.
Rates are currently climbing so it's a good idea to protect your budget.
So whether you are a #firsttimehomebuyer, a #militaryrelocation, or a #growingfamily moving to a bigger home because you just found out you're having #twins, do yourself (and your realtor) a favour and call me first! #fivestarserviceeverytime