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The first step is to speak to your loan officer.  You’ll want to know the following: 1. Your gross income 2. Your available cash for a down payment 3. Your monthly debts 4. Potential locations and types of properties you are interested in   By providing us with your income/assets/debts, we are able to determine…

An FHA or VA loan will typically require a credit score in the 600s.  A conventional loan will become possible at higher scores – the minimum will depend on other factors like down payment and debt-to-income ratio.  The lowest possible score however is 620. We check credit scores with Experian, Equifax and Experian and use…

A common misconception is that you’ll need a 20% down payment to receive mortgage financing for a home purchase.  You can actually get a loan with as low as 3.5% down, or 0% down if you are a VA eligible veteran.   Specifically for first time buyers, there are actually programs based on the city…

Full report here: http://www.fhfa.gov/webfiles/16591/ConservatorsRpt82610.pdf   FHFA, linked above, wrote a report on the state of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac.  Here are some interesting pieces of it.  All data is from Fannie Mae’s stats:   1. This year’s average credit score is 758 versus 716 in 2007. 2. 8% of loans are less than 10% down.…

Want to put less than 5 or 10% down?  You’re likely going to get an FHA loan.  Due to increased risk of defaults, HUD earlier this year increased its upfront mortgage insurance premium (MIP) from 1.75 to 2.25%.  Now, starting in October, they are increasing the annual premium while decreasing the upfront premium.  This is…