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Mortgage Brokers: Basics That You Should Know

The term mortgage broker refers to a company or person that can make arrangement for a mortgage between two entities. These entities are usually a lender and a borrower. The lender is known as a mortgage lender. This professional works directly with the borrower to help them opt for the right type of mortgage. In this article, we are going to find out more about this professional. Read on to now more.

Why should you use a Mortgage Broker?

Basically, this professional helps you throughout the process of looking for and applying for a mortgage. Their role is to get you the best deal on the basis of your circumstances. Listed below are some of the services they offer.

They help you make an assessment of your financial situation
They suggest the most suitable option to meet your needs
They help you search the market to help you look for the best deal to match your criteria
Now that you know about the role of these professionals, we suggest that you check out the pros and cons of working with one. This will help you decide whether you should go with these pros or not.
Pros

Convenience: If you don’t know anything about these markets and finance, you may want to work with a broker. After all, it requires a great deal of time, money and effort to look for deals, handle the paperwork and talk to lenders.

Access: Since these pros have a good deal of experience in the field, they are in touch with other professionals as well. For instance, they have a good business relationship with many lenders as well. Therefore, they can help you look for the best deal based on your needs.

Expertise: The problem is that the mortgage industry is not easy for everyone to understand. When the rate of interest goes up or down, it has a great impact on the number of mortgage deals. Therefore, consulting an expert is a stroke of genius. After all, you don’t want to make decisions based on your lack of knowledge.

Cons

Cost: Since these professionals charge for their services, you may have to set a budget to use their services. This will reduce the amount of money you can set aside for rainy days.

The service charges of these professionals vary significantly. Therefore, we suggest that you shop around before hiring one to meet your needs.

Limitations: It’s important to keep in mind that not all of these brokers have access to the whole market, which means depending on a single broker may limit the options available to you.

Quality: Experience and qualifications may vary between brokers. Therefore, if you end up hiring an inexperienced one, you may not be able to go through the process in a timely fashion. And you may not be able to get the best deal.

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How to Get a Mortgage With Bad Credit?

If you have a great credit rating, you won’t find it difficult to get a mortgage. Almost every lender will be more than happy to serve you. On the other hand, if your credit rating is low, you will face a hard time getting a loan to finance your new home.

Your credit reports and credit rating is quite important for creditors to find out if you are a good or bad candidate for a mortgage loan. Aside from this, the assessment of your creditworthiness allows lenders to get a better idea of the amount of money they can lend you with confidence. In other words, this can assure that that you will make the payments on time.

The credit reports and scores will help a lender know if you have paid back your previous loans without any missed deadlines. If you have had a lot of late payments, or payment delinquents, chances are that you have a poor rating. The mention of any of these can be a red flag to your prospective lenders. Since the goal of the lender is to make lots of money, they may take you as a risk.

Unfortunately, if you have changed your habits, they will still review your past to get an assessment whether it will be a good idea to do business with you. Similarly, if you have a credit score in the range of 750, the lender will still consider your debt usage. If your reports show that you have taking loans quite often, they may find it a bit too risky to grant you a loan.

First-Time Home Buyers

If you are a first-time homebuyer, getting a conventional home loan with poor credit rating can be a bit hard nut to crack. However, it’s not a goal that is impossible to achieve.

Tips to Qualify for a mortgage with Bad Credit

Given below are a few tips that you can use to improve your chances of qualifying for a credit rating. If you follow these tips, chances are that your application will be approved.

1. Make a Larger Down Payment

First, if you don’t qualify for a non-traditional loan, you can wait for a while and save money to make a larger down payment. The problem is that lenders consider borrowers with a bad credit score a great risk. Generally, lenders are willing to grant loans to lenders who can make at least 20% down payment. Therefore, if you can pay that much as down payment, you will be able to qualify.

2. Reduce Your Debt Usage

If you have poor credit rating and you are trying to get a loan, we suggest that you reduce your overall ration of debt-to-income. This ration allows a lender to figure out the amount of money you can afford.

3. Use Your Rental History

In most credit reports, you can’t find information about the user’s rental payments. But if you can, you can prove that you made all the payments on a consistent basis over the past 24 months. Aside from this, some other reporting tools can also. They may include RentTracki, Rental Kharma, and Rent Reporters, to name a few.

Before you go for a tool, we suggest that you do your homework to find out about the monthly charges and fees. Aside from this, you should find out if your private data can be protected and the steps you need to do if you cancel the service.

Keep in mind that these tools provide reports for only big credit bureaus. However, you can also find some that can send their reports to all of them.

4. Explain Your Circumstances and Credit Rating

Another good way is to write a letter to explain your situation. In the letter, you should mention the reasons of your negative points on your credit report. And you try to convince the lender that the mistakes won’t happen again.

Also, you should assure that that you are trying to handle the situation you are in. For instance, you can help them realize that you are looking for a job. Before talking to the lender, make sure you get documents to spell out the credit challenges you have been facing. Aside from this, if you can spell out the derogatory items on your credit history, you may be in a better position to get a mortgage.

When taking to the lender, make sure you are specific. You shouldn’t be afraid to provide details of your concerns and needs. This will save you from a lot of headache down the road.

Conclusion

Long story short, if you have a bad credit score but you are still looking for a lender to give you a loan for your first home, we suggest that you follow the tips given in this article. Make sure you also discuss the matter with your mortgage specialist or mortgage broker.

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How To Pay Off Your Mortgage In 5 Years

My wife and I were “home buyers” for at least 7 years on our current residence. Notice that I said home “buyers,” and not home “owners.” There is a common misconception that when you take out a mortgage, you are immediately a home “owner”

Assuming that you have a 30 year mortgage, the reality is that you are simply in the process of buying the home over a 30 year period. The bank, is the true owner of the property. If you don’t believe me, try missing a few mortgage payments, and see what happens.

3 months ago, we paid off our 30 year mortgage (in 7 years, or 23 years early). Now we are true home “owners.” In this article, I’m going to show you step by step how we were able to accomplish this. Using our existing income, and without incurring any additional debt.

Equity

Let’s talk about “Equity.” Equity, or appreciation, is the difference between what your home is worth and what you owe to the bank. So if you owe $100,000 and your house is worth $300,000, then you have $200,000 of Equity in your home.

We had roughly $250,000 of Equity on our house. We owed the bank $115,000 and our house was worth $367,000.

This $250,000 is dormant. Meaning, it looks good, but it wasn’t doing anything for us.

Home-Equity Line of Credit (HELOC)

So the first thing that we did was we ‘tapped’ into this equity. We went to the bank and took out an Home Equity Line of Credit for $50,000.

What is an equity line of credit? Also called a HELOC, an home equity line of credit is a liquid line that you are able to draw funds from at any time for any purpose. It’s like a gigantic credit card.

Although the HELOC had a limit for $50,000, the amount that we owed on it was $0 at the time that we took it out. This is because, similar to a credit card, you don’t owe anything until you actually use it.

Use HELOC to Pay Down Mortgage

Immediately after we got the HELOC, we withdrew $20,000 and applied it to our Mortgage (additional principal payment).

So at this point, we have $20,000 due on the HELOC, but our mortgage has been paid down by $20,000 (from $115,000 to $95,000).

Use HELOC as “new” Checking Account

Before I go on, let me mention that after we used the $20,000 to pay down our mortgage, we still had the same $115,000 of debt ($20,000 on HELOC and $95,000 on Mortgage).

So to payoff the HELOC, we just used it as our new checking account. When we got paid, we took 100% of our paychecks and applied it to the HELOC.

Now you may be wondering, “with all of our money going to the HELOC, how did we pay our bills?” Remember the HELOC is a “liquid” line. So at the end of each month, we made 1 withdrawal from the HELOC to pay our bills (including our mortgage).

100% of Cash Flow

For us, our monthly paychecks totaled roughly $6,000. Our bills, including our mortgage, and all of our living expenses (gas, groceries, etc.) totaled approximately $3,500. So by applying 100% of our monthly checks to the HELOC, and then using the HELOC to pay our bills, we were able to use 100% of our monthly cash flow to pay the $20,000 HELOC off.

So with and estimated $2,500 of cash flow ($6,000 minus $3,500) the $20,000 was paid off in 8 months.

Repeat The Process

We repeated this process until the remaining $95,000 was paid off (approximately 2 years).

What Do You Need?

1. Cash Flow – You must have positive cash flow in your household budget

2. Credit Score – A decent credit score (650 or above)

3. Equity – Positive equity in your home.

What You Should Know

VERY IMPORTANT: The HELOC should be used to paydown your mortgage. It should not be used to fund a vacation, buy a car, or a boat.

ALSO IMPORTANT: The HELOC is not a Home Equity Loan (HEL). A Home Equity Loan is a 2nd mortgage, and it is treated the same.

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