Badassery Magazine December 2017 Issue 19 | Page 61

S o you want to buy a house. Good for you! Buying a home can be a smooth, structured process or it can be an emotional roller coaster – but YOU do have quite a bit of con- trol over it! I can tell you from over 24 years of experience in the mortgage world if you do any of the things listed below…. you run the risk of losing your loan approval. Really – DON’T do these things!! Ready? Here we go! 1. DON’T quit your job! Please – don’t give notice, don’t decide that now is the time to be a Pampered Chef, or Stella & Dot rep – just don’t!! You’d be shocked to hear how many people will give notice and then we go to do the final Verifica- tion of Employmen t (yes – we do that!!) only to find out that their last day is the following week. WHAT?? Do you think we won’t find out? Seriously – we have ways of knowing all kinds of things. Which brings me to #2. 2. DON’T lie or fib on your loan application. Just don’t. If you say you’ve worked at your job for 10 years and it’s really been 6 months….we’re going to find out! We verify employment, past addresses – recent inqui- ries – we have ways of finding out and it’s so much easier if you just level with us from the start. Your Loan Consultant is your advo- cate, and they don’t get paid un- til your loan closes, so they have a vested interest. An experienced Loan Consultant is going to be watching for fraud and often what you think is a deal killer just has to be structured cor- rectly. Have a question on this? Contact me – happy to help! 3. DON’T buy a car, truck, RV, boat, snowmobile, etc. You can wait until the loan closes. If you choose not to, we have to document the new payment and if your debt to income ratio goes too high – you just might be living in said snowmobile. Not pretty! 4. DON’T quit paying your bills once you have a Preapproval letter in hand. That Preapproval is subject to everything remain- ing status quo. So don’t blow it! 5. DON’T co-sign for anyone – they can wait until they can afford it just like you did. If you co-sign now, we will need to add that payment to your debts, and you may not qualify. The whole loan process is usually less than a month. Note – if you ever do co- sign on anything – you are just as responsible for that debt as the person you are co-signing for. My advice is not to do it, ever. 60