Transcript
Hey guys, welcome back to another week of Mortgage Matters and Minutes. Again, I'm your host Brent Rasmmanson, owner of Mortgage Specialists, and today we are going to go back into time and cover our very first Mortgage Matters and Minutes video because it still relates today. What we're going to talk about today is why getting preapproved early matters more than ever. And I know we are looking at February of 2025. We went back in time and noticed our very first episode was in October of 2021. So, we've been doing this over four years and we had our 200th episode last week. But today, again, we're going to talk about pre-approvals and we have many videos about pre-approvals. But let's talk quickly about why it makes a difference to get those done early. And we can share from experience it makes a huge difference. Uh because most clients don't know what they don't know. They would assume obviously they make good income, they've paid their bills on time and they've saved some money, but guesstimating what you need versus what the rules actually say are two different things. So many times people assume their income is coming in and their AGI, their total amount of income they report on the tax returns is what matters. But in our world, we're going to look at every different source of income. Whether it's a salary, or whether it's a bonus, commission, overtime, whether you're self-employed, or whether your income fluctuates up and down depending on something you do at your particular job. We're going to look at all those to make sure it meets the standard of the rules. Because unfortunately, it isn't all about just receiving income and it works. It's how you receive it, how much, when, all the above as well, too. Also, what we sometimes see is that there's things that are incorrect on your credit report or your score might be a little bit lower, and we want to work to get that up. Uh, point taken. Today, I just spoke with a client. We gave them some advice on getting their score up 20 to 30 points over the next couple months to get a better interest rate because they're not looking to purchase for three months from now. So, if we start early, we can give you that advice. But if we wait till Friday night when you're putting an offer in on Saturday, we're not going to have that much flexibility to make adjustments to get the best type of payment available to you. The biggest one I like to start with is showing people what you really have and what you're really going to need for your cash to close, for your down payment, for what closing costs are, for what the prepaids and escros are, and also looking at what it takes to qualify. Maybe you already have a house and you're looking to possibly purchase another one. Do you qualify for both payments or do you have to sell one house to buy the next house? There's lots of different situations that can possibly come up. And waiting till the last minute isn't going to solve those answers any quicker for you. And if you don't have that pre-approval letter to supply with your offer, generally speaking, sellers are not going to want to work with you. The biggest connotation that we see in doing the pre-approval early is knowing what you can afford. Obviously, when you're looking for houses, you look by the home price range. But when we look at mortgage loans, the payment is the most important. That's what we qualify you on is the mortgage payment. How much can you afford in a payment per month? So, we have to calculate what that payment looks like in relationship to a home price. So that when you're looking for houses, you're not saying, "I want to buy this house for $2,200 or this house for 3,000." We know what range and what you're going to need to get that in there. Because property taxes, homeowners insurance, mortgage insurance, interest rates can always deviate and change. We want to stay up to speed in the market to get you accurate results. Obviously, when you put in an offer, the faster the seller wants to close, the better it is for them. The faster the seller gets their money, the better it is for the seller. So, why not appease them and show them, hey, look, I've gotten ahead of the game. I've done my preapproval. Now, we can submit that offer here and close on a quicker time frame than someone else that maybe has a credit issue, an income issue, or just started with their preapproval, maybe doesn't know their password into their login accounts to get their payubs and W2s. Here at Mortgage Specialist, we still have and to this day over 25 years 99.9% pre-approval ratio closing. Meaning if we preapprove you, we close. There's no denial. There's no situation that says there's a deviance and a change and we didn't know about this rule. We honor those preapprovals and we close those transactions. Things can come up out of our control. Thankfully, knock on wood, they have it. But if we have reviewed something based on the information you've given us, you are going to be able to close. And telling the seller that is hugely empowerful. We know emotionally you know about your own situation. We know you know your personal bills, finances, how you handle things, but we as the lender, the seller does not know that. And we have to show them that you are up to speed with qualifying to make things quick as to close on a real estate transaction takes about 30 days is normal. There's a lot of legalities that happen in that 30 days. And if we're just starting it, not having the paperwork we need, it very much can make it a very stressful process. So, by doing the pre-approval well before you're looking for houses, much of the paperwork you've already sent in does not need to be duplicated, and we can repurpose and reuse that, making the process much simpler and stress-free than what people would assume. Again, preapprovals aren't always written in stone, but here at Mortgage Specialists, we take the uttermost disciplinary and reviewing everything to make sure that end of the day when you show up for closing, there's not going to be problems that are going to arise that you might not be able to afford the house, you might not have the paperwork that you need to close on the house or any of the things that you've heard about that are scary through real estate. We like to have the conversation early and at any point in time, 12 months to 6 months in advance is not too early. 1 hour to two hours before you're putting an offer in is not too early. We would like to chat with you 6 or 12 months, not one or two hours before, but it all comes down to you and how organized you are. We've had clients contact us an hour before putting a offer in. And if they are very organized with finding their paperwork, can it be done? But generally speaking, we want to see a month or two in advance is the perfect scenario on getting ahead of things to make sure that pre-approval is ready for you when you're ready to close on your new home. So again, over 200 episodes later, we're still talking about the same things with clients, which is totally great. Pre-approvals matter, doing those early. Give us a call to schedule your pre-approval at 402991-5153.
Check us out on our website at mtg-specialist.com. Google mortgage specialist. Take a look into us and what our experience and our trusted process has done for other people. And have a great rest of your week. We'll see you here next time. Mortgage Specialists, driven, trusted, reliable.
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