How to Prepare for A Mortgage to Buy A Home in Northeast Florida

Yoda on a fountain, which I mentioned him in my blog post

In today’s blog post I’m gonna talk how to get prepared for a mortgage, so you can buy a house, so sit back and enjoy!

Remember when Yoda told Luke that he must learn control, control you must learn control? That’s the same advice I’m gonna tell you too. Control of your credit, control of your your finances, your spending habits, your debits and control everything else in between. I don’t think following Yoda’s advice is a bad idea. 😂

Let’s get to the nitty gritty. Credit. You need credit. Most lenders will require at least a score of 640 and higher. Yes, some may go lower, but the interest-rate is going to be tied to your credit score. So the higher your score, the better interest rate you can receive. That can save you thousands in interest over the course of your mortgage and also make your payment a little lower. So you may be wondering, how can you check your credit and find out what your score is?

You can use free services like credit karma or credit sesame, but those are not always accurate. You can get your free credit reports from annualcreditreport. com. There you can get them from each credit bureau, as there are three different ones. You can also purchase your credit score from each one as well. You can also look at myFICO.com and pay for a subscription or a one time fee to get all three credit scores. If you choose to go to the Credit Karma route, I have found for me, that the items reported on my report there are accurate, but the score is not. So it could be a quick and cheap way to get a rough idea of where you’re at credit wise.

Having too much debt can keep you from getting qualified for a loan, if your debt to income is out of whack. So paying down or paying off things can only help improve tour score and your financial picture.

Show me the money! Don’t worry you don’t have to show me, I just like saying it. There are costs involved in buying a home, you do you have your down payment plus closing costs and inspection fees too.

I won’t go over what all those fees are, but a rough estimate for closing cost is 3 to 4% of the purchase price of the home and down payment could range from zero down to 20% down and in between. Or you could even put down more than 20%. I do give estimates on another post I wrote about on closing costs. If you’re not rolling in the dough, there are also down payment assistance programs out there. I talk about those in another blog post that’s about down payment assistance programs.

You should know within a payment there’s principal, interest, taxes and homeowners insurance. Principle is the amount that goes towards paying your balance down. Interest is how the bank makes some money. Homeowners insurance helps protect your home in the case of certain events, like a tree falling on your house, hail damaging your roof, things like that. Property taxes have to be paid, so it’s easier to have them included in your payment. Those taxes go to your county your home is in and covers local government costs and schools.

No I’m not gonna say that everyone should buy a house, because sometimes buying a house doesn’t always make sense for everyone and there are costs associated with home ownership. Like repairs. Unlike renting if something breaks you can tell the property manager or landlord and its their responsibility to fix it. When owning a home the repairs belong to you my friend. So it would be a good idea to budget for repairs, save money every month that you designate for your repairs of your home. Now buying new or a home that has the major items replaced, that can help with the repair part, but not always a guarantee things won’t go wrong.

The good part is you don’t have to ask anyone if you can bring a stray animal or two home with you, you can paint whatever colors you want, you can run in the backyard in your favorite Jedi knight robe yielding your lightsaber against the dark side, while waiting for your steaks to grill on the barbie.

So as you can see there’s a lot to consider before you buy a home, but the rewards are awesome. If you have any questions about the topics I went over, call or text me at 904-910-3516.

Thank you for making your way here! I give away free guides that talk about the home buying and selling process. Just look below the video and you will find them listed there.