Choosing a Home Mortgage Lender

[Margarita]

Any tips? We didn't even shop around when we bought our first house, just went to our bank and got a loan. I'm wondering if I should do some comparison shopping this time but have no idea how to do it. Has anyone done it? Is it worth it? What questions should I ask?

[andrea]

oh sorry no help here if we were going to buy a house we would go through his dad's.. he owns a mortgage company

[Debbiec]

Hey Margs,

We did shop around some but we ended up getting the best deal from the Broker who was affiliated with the real estate company that we went through.

I definitely suggest shopping around. We got a decent rate but couldn't get the best out there since we didn't have a lot of money to put down.

[Deana]

We are doing this right now, as we are about to re-finance. Some things that we ask are:
What is the origination fee?
Closing costs, and can they be rolled in to the mortgage?
Comparison of different ARM yrs/percentages?
Can we roll additional debt into the mortgage (interestingly enough, some lenders advise not to do this; others encorage it)?

That's about all I can think of. I'm not very clear on the whole mortgage business anyway, I just follow David's lead.:)

[girlzrule]

I got a VA loan so I'm not much help here. Sorry! :)

[Margarita]

Thanks, ladies. I sucked it up yesterday and did some looking even though I didn't want to. I felt like :argh: by 9:30 pm and just went to bed. I now know more about home loans than I'd ever cared to. Whoopee. I looked online then called a few local mortgage companies and got numbers for the same type of loan. It's amazing how different the closing costs can be! I also learned that the lowest interest rate isn't always the best. Now when we're ready to get pre-qualified, I'll know what questions to ask and be able to understand the answers (mostly).

D, those are good questions. I also looked into whether or not buying points to lower the interest rate would help. Sometimes it does, others it doesn't. That also depends on how long you expect to live in that house. As I understand it, one point costs 1% of the loan amount and will lower your interest rate a certain amount.

I was happy to find out from my dad that any gain on the sale of our current house will not be taxed. So, we can do whatever we want with the left over money, re-invest it in the new house as a down payment, pay closing costs, buy appliances, or buy a baby on the black market. Okay, maybe not that last one. :biglaugh:

Now I just need to get numbers from a few more places, then get started on the pre-qualification. It will be interesting to find out the highest purchase price we'll qualify for now that I have less income but we also have a house that's appreciated in value over $34k.

Oh yeah, I forgot to add... B has heard that teachers can get special deals of some sort on home loans. Does anyone know about that?