Buying a home requires a lot of preplanning and paperwork, and most of this burden falls to the task of finding a mortgage loan. Mortgages can be incredibly tricky pieces of negotiation between lender and borrower, but at the end of the road is your new home – which makes it all worth it. Getting a mortgage can be a confusing time for anyone, first time home buyers and experienced movers alike, but there are a number of things you can do to make this process far less difficult and relatively painless.
Start planning for your buy early.
As with anything in life, preplanning pays off while shopping around for a mortgage. The more you spend on credit cards and personal loans, the harder hit your account will be when it comes time to apply for mortgage loans. Creditworthiness is an essential consideration for banks as they ponder over whether to approve you for a home loan or not. Start today to pay off any high-interest credit card debt you may be carrying and try to reduce balances as close to zero as possible before applying for home loans. The better your balance to an available credit ratio is the more trustworthy you seem as a borrower. Healthy credit can take years to build, so begin working on this as soon as you’re able in order to stand the best chance of receiving a favorable interest rate on your home loan. A reduction by even one percent can amount to tens of thousands in savings over the lifetime of the loan.
It’s also essential to begin saving specifically for buying a home as early as possible. The more time you have to save the more free capital you will have easy access to when the time comes to putting down a deposit and begin making monthly mortgage payments. Cash flow in and out are primary indicators of overall financial health when submitting a loan application. Therefore, years of healthy credit management and routine savings are indicative of a responsible borrower that won’t pose much risk to the financial institution when writing the loan.
Shop Around
Use a home loan comparison in order to find the best deal available to you when it comes time to set down roots in a new town or new property. Shopping around is easily done and banks are more than happy to give you prospective rates that are likely to accompany a variety of amounts and repayment schedules. Take the time to find the best institution for your needs and future cash flow health in order to make the best financial decision for you and your family. This choice today will affect you for the next twenty to thirty years, so take the time to evaluate all your options before pulling the trigger on any one bank.
Decide on the down payment and life of the loan.
The last thing you need to consider is how much to put down as a one-off payment on the property, and how long you want to pay the loan back. A longer loan term means more accumulated interest – and a higher overall repayment – but this also lowers monthly payments throughout the life of the loan. Obviously, a shorter period provides the opposite, but with higher monthly payments. It is generally advisable to pay back the loan as quickly as you can, but make sure that you don’t commit to an overextension. This will dog your finances for years to come, creating increasing stress on you and your family that is completely avoidable with some simple upfront planning.
Securing your mortgage takes patience and research, but there is no reason why anyone should settle on a deal that isn’t right for them. With so many lenders and resources out there, take the time to find the right mortgage for you and your family’s future.