1. Settling for a high interest
rate.
When you are shopping around for a mortgage, one of the most
important factors is the interest rate. The interest rate will
ultimately decide how much money you will be spending at the
closing table and how much you will be spending in charges over
the life of the loan.
The difference between a percentage and half a percentage
could mean thousands of dollars over the life of the loan.
So shop around, if you speak with four different loan
officers, I can assure you, you will get four different rates,
obviously you want to go with the one that is the lowest.
Don’t be afraid to ask questions. Ask how the rate is
determined. Sometimes loan officers can make a little extra
commission by raising the rate a little bit.
2. Read your good faith estimate
When you decide on a mortgage and a lender, they will send
you disclosure documents, they are required to send these by
law. Inside of these documents you will find a good faith
estimate. This is an accurate estimate of what you can expect
your closing costs to be when you go to settlement.
Read every part of this document line for line and word for
word. If there is anything on there that you don’t understand,
call your loan officer and go over it together.
Your loan officer will most likely want to mail you these
documents. This is fine. However, if you can meet somewhere to
go over it together, than all the better.
But read your good faith estimate very carefully before you
sign it, this could save you anywhere from a couple of hundred
dollars to a couple of thousand.
3. Don’t be afraid to shop around
If at any time a lender or loan officer tells you not to deal
with anyone else because it may be detrimental to the loan or to
your credit, they are lying. If this happens, they are trying to
scare you out of doing business with anyone else.
Feel free to shop around as much as you would like. Do as
much research as you can before making a decision. So when you
finally do make a decision on a mortgage, you can avoid the
pitfalls that people so often make.
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