7 Financial Moves You Should Not Make as a Home Buyer

Today I’m making a video for buyers. These are seven financial moves you should not make as a buyer when you are getting ready to buy a house.

This is the part of the buying process that you want to make sure you get right because you’re going to be looking at getting a preapproval which is basically asking the bank, “Will you give me a loan?” They’re going to check on your background, your credit history, and all this other stuff to just make sure that everything lines up for them to give you money.

So what I’m going to do is walk you through seven of the issues that may come up during the whole process that you definitely don’t want to do, so nothing else happens and we can get to the finish line and buy that house for you.

And the first one is:

You want to keep your current job or your current income; you don’t want to make any job changes at this point. If it’s something that you can’t control, that’s totally understandable, but you do not want to make any job changes when you’re buying a house.

Number 2:

Do not make any major purchases during the process of looking at a house. As you start looking at some houses, you may see they need some type of painting, or furniture, or appliances, or decorating or whatever it is you see in the house. You don’t want to buy that ahead of time, you need to wait until you get into that house to make any of those major purchases.

Number 3:

Do not miss any credit card payments during the process, because if you start missing credit card payments and you’re already on the line for getting approved for a loan, that may drop you down considerably and you may actually be bumped out of getting a preapproval or getting a loan and/or it might actually increase your interest rate.

Number 4:

Don’t take any big undisclosed amounts of money and stick it in your bank account just before you purchase. This could be a gift from somebody or some other means of large money coming into your account. The bank is going to want to trace that money back at least 6 months to the other accounts it came from.  Just make sure if you are getting a gift that you can make it traceable.

Number 5:

Don’t apply for any new credit cards right now. It may seem like a good idea at the time to get a new credit card at a Home Depot or something to that effect, but they’re going to run a credit check and that’s going to hit your credit score, so make sure you don’t get any new credit cards.

Number 6:

Do not spend any of your down payment money. That money is there for one thing and one thing only, do not touch it because that could really throw you into a tailspin when you go to close.

Number 7:

Don’t delay on getting the paperwork over to the mortgage broker. That is one thing that actually can extend your closing out; it might extend your rate lock out, which will cost you a lot more money.

So those are the top 7 things I’m suggesting, as you are looking at houses that you don’t do.  Hopefully you found this helpful and hopefully you follow these tips.