5 Things You Must Know Before Buying a Home

Uh, Patriot Nation, I have a great video for you today. In this video I'm going to be covering the five most important things that you must know or do before you try to buy a home in 2025. And if you don't understand these things or if you're missing one of these five critical elements, you're going to find yourself in a whole lot of trouble and potentially not able to even buy a home. So, watch this all the way through. I'm going to show you why this is so important and I'm going to show you how to get all five of these things in order so that when you are ready to buy a home you're going to be well prepared and able to execute. As always, let's kick off this rodeo right now. Hi folks, I'm Kevin Fagan. I'm the mortgage patriot on your side nestled here in the Hill Country above San Antonio, Texas. So all you proud Texans and all you great folks all around the country. And as always, another great video. And what is that? Well, we're going to cover the five things you absolutely must know or must do before you buy a home in 2025. So, the first thing is you've got to get pre-approved. Now, I'm sure you've heard this word thrown around a lot, but what does that mean? Well, it means you're going to engage a mortgage professional like myself and we're going to go through your entire financial situation. We're going to look at your income, your debt, your credit scores, your savings and we're going to go through all of that. So let's take credit scores first. You know, a lot of people they kind of have a feeling, you know, a sense of what their credit scores are but it's based on things like Credit Karma, Experian, or whatever the free services that are out there. And they're looking at one of the trade bureaus and they tend to you know they kind of give you a a a general estimate but it may not be accurate. And even more important you need to know that and and you need to know if your credit scores are adequate for the loan program that you're looking at. And there's several loan programs that you can use. But more importantly and more common is the fact that let's say you have you know low 600 or mid 600 scores at least by by what someone like Credit Karma might be telling you and and by the way Credit Karma and like Services they kind of overshoot on their scores they tend to be a little bit High because they're not using the same algorithms as the three trade bureaus Transunion eifax and Experian and so you need to know that but more common like I said is uh you need to know that there might be some collection items or even charge off items that you either you are aware of or you thought maybe were taking care of that we have to discover ahead of time because even though your scores might be adequate you might end up not being able to do a deal because these collection and charge offs are are getting in the way of trying to do a transaction the underwriters will not let you go for forward if you have certain amount of collections or certain amount of charge offs and so forth so we really have to identify those way ahead of time months ahead of time so again that we can work on them and have have yourself ready when the time comes so with my pre-approval I'm going to do a couple things for you one is I'm going to run a what's called a soft pull I'm going to do a soft pull review of your credit I'm not going to do a hard pull hard pull is what get you into small trouble lowers your score a little bit maybe not as much as people think but it does lower your score and more importantly it triggers all kinds of marketing leads meaning that information is sold to all kinds of companies around the country next thing you know you're getting literally dozens if not 20 30 calls or texts on the phone driving you crazy telling you hey I understand you're looking for a loan and they start giving you all kinds of uh lowball and bait switch offers you do not want that a soft pull review uh which I always do at first gives me all the information I need gives me your scores does not hurt your credit one point and does not trigger any marketing leads so I do a soft review for you and then of course I'll be producing a pre-approval letter for you and that's what is that going to look like well that's going to give you the upper boundary kind of the upper boundary of the price points of the houses you can look at now don't worry because 80% of the people aren't ready at this point to be purchasing and that's the whole purpose of this video is to show you all the steps you got to put in place so this very first one is important because I'm going to give you a a track to go on a pathway a strategy uh to maybe we're identifying certain credit cards we need to pay down maybe certain collections that you need to track either in terms of disputing or or figuring out how to negotiate and so forth and or uh possibly savings amount per month to build up that savings Nest so that you're ready to with the cash to close when the time comes so I will deliver to you not only the pre-approval but we'll go over the strategy on how to get you on track of what that's going to look like so the second thing you must know or must do before you buy a home in 2025 is you have to know what your closing cost are the actual check you're going to write at closing what is that going to look like or approximate and it's not just as simple as oh buying a $300,000 house and I'm getting an FHA loan I know that's three and a half% so I'm going to probably come out of pocket for about 10 a half thousand no there's actually three buckets I like to talk about the three buckets all the time your first bucket is your down payment bucket which we just said three and a half on a FHA loan could be more for a conventional loan and the second bucket is your closing cost that's your processing your underwriting your title fees your government recording fees your appraisal fees list goes on and on you need to know what those are and bucket number three is your prepays and esos you got to prepay 12 months of insurance and you have to Escrow probably two more months of insurance and about four months of property taxes so all those factors are going to go into that closing cost figure to actual check you right and I can help you walk you through that help you understand what that's going to look like so I'll give you that number I'll give you the highend number of what it's going to look like what I call without any help and I'm going to show you what the impact of down payment assistance and seller concessions will be on that number so you'll have a number that says without any help it's going to look like this and with down payment assist and seller concessions it would look maybe like this so I'm going to give you both scenarios it'll give you a really good comfortable feel for okay this is the worst that's going to happen to me and if uh Kev Kevin or someone like him can get me down payment assistance and sell her concessions then it should be a lot lower maybe this range hope that helps but that's got to know cash to close that's number two so the third thing you really must know or do is to explore all your down payment assistant program options and I can help you do that now there's thousands of them so there's no one could possibly know them all they exist on all levels the federal level as in National programs you have state programs you have County programs and you have City programs believe it or not so for example let's say you're in Houston Texas and you say well you've heard that there's a $110,000 grant or program available and that that mer may not be true but trust me as the further you go down the the line on national state county or city more strings and more conditions apply you may or may not find out if you're available for it I can do that for you quick answer is most time as long as you don't make too much money probably nine out of 10 times I can get get down payment assistance the question is going to be how much is it going to be for and or does how does that impact your rate because a lot of down payment assistant programs actually raise your rate so it may not be advantageous for you so we'll go over all those options and I'll show you every bit of them so you need to get pre-approved you need to know approximately what your cash to close is and you need to know what down payment assistant programs might be available to you uh the fourth thing you really have to know is you have to have somebody that can shop rates for you so that sounds a little obvious but if you go to one of the big Banks like a Wells Fargo or a bank of America they only have their rate if you go in there and say hey can you show me the top 25 rates that you might have for a conventional loan right now they're going to look at you like you're smoking something but someone like me who's a loan officer it's a broker we have agreements with over 150 direct lenders across the country so I can literally shop for you to get the best deal you're always going to win when somebody's going shop rates for you just that simple a direct lender will not be able to do that but a loan officer who's Affiliated as a broker can help you and I I'll do just that so the very last you really must know or must do and it's as important as any of them is you've got to have a good Agent an experienced agent that understands how to do two things they got to be able to negotiate and they have to be able to structure a proper offering because when you've gotten pre-approved and you've got you know what your costs are going to be and all things we've already discussed and you're ready to buy buy a home and put an offer in you really need somebody that knows what they're doing just that simple my team I've got agents all over the country that I work with and I'm holding their hands and structuring those deals for your benefit so you can maximize things like s concessions or any other incentives that might blow your way and minimize your cash to close so you can come out of pocket for the very least amount and if you've got an agent that you want to work with that's fine uh but I need to be integral with them and talking to them about again how to structure these contracts there's a QR code here hover over that if You' like that'll set up an appointment with me I'll get you pre-approved so we can get a game plan for you we'll figure out kind of what your closing costs are any down payment assistance are available to you and I'll be able to shop when the right time comes for a rate and we'll talk about already have an agent or if you need one we'll talk about how to educate them so that they're working properly for you and maximizing all your benefits hope this has bit of help to you I'm Kev Fagen the mortgage Patriot have a great one END OF TRANSCRIPT