The Mortgage Loan

This past week most of my time has been spent on looking for mortgages and examining the lenders. It’s amazing how much has changed in the lending industry since the economy started going downhill. The down payments for people that own more than one home are much higher than they used to be. No longer can you get a rehab loan unless you get one of those 203k Loans. And with those types of loans you need to use a 203k contractor. Normally, this wouldn’t be a problem, but 203k contractors are hard to find, and we have had such horrible luck with general contractors in the past. Every time we have used one we end up redoing the project ourselves. And quite honestly we usually do better job than they did. Plus, a bit of sweat equity would be a great cost saver and we can subcontract the things that would need to be certified and permitted. So no, the 203k Loan is out for us for now. 

After lots of looking, we decided to go with LendingTree.com. It just seems easier to do some one stop shopping and the rates are extremely competitive. Quicken Loans is very similar, but we choose LendingTree.com because they are clients of ours in our day-to-day jobs. 

We both have excellent credit, so getting that all important pre-approval letter was not hard at all. We just had to submit the paperwork required by the lender we choose. Then he e-mailed us our letter. We forwarded that on to our realtor to have on file for when we find the house we are looking for. 

So that is done. In the meantime, we are still looking for that one home that meets our criteria. It is way more important to us to find a home that meets all of our criteria than it is to rush into things. Since we are going to be long distance, it is better to make it right than to make a guess. There is no rush, so will just keep looking for the right one to appear.