#1 Be prepared.
Always be prepared. I think the main thing about being prepared is to make sure that you’ve done a bit of research around what you want, and then you can ask the questions to your broker around borrowing capacity, where do we sit? – deposit wise, what do we need? We can look at everything. Being prepared is answering all your questions as well. Don’t be afraid to ask a silly question (that you might perceive) because there are no silly questions.
#2 Savings.
I think this is one that’s kind of overlooked by a lot of people who get quite excited about buying a house and that’s actually – savings. I think the biggest thing around savings is to make sure you’re prepared, like I said, in tip number one . Make sure you start a savings plan of roughly a three month period prior is when you want to start, budgeting too. That gives you enough to work with for policies around general savings and things like that, which you can ask more detailed questions about later on.
# 3 Pre-Approval.
I think it’s always good when you do decide to take that leap to get a pre-approval involved. I think it’s really, really pertinent to do that these days. It makes it a much simpler process as well. So basically you’re putting everything together, chat to your broker, ask him the questions, then you put the application in, and then you have a pre-approval. So you’re basically all ready to go when you do make an offer on the property.
#4 Be open and honest.
Be really open and honest about things. Don’t try and hide that maybe you have missed a payment on something or anything like that because at the end of the day the banks do find out and that creates a lot of problems, not only for us, but especially for you guys as clients. So the whole idea is to obviously make it as seamless as possible, if we know everything straight up front, we can go to the banks and discuss what happened here and give explanations around what’s actually gone on, to put you in the best possible position.
#5 Talk to your broker.
I think it goes without saying really, chat to your broker about all this, because all the previous tips combined together will put you in the best stead to get your loan approved. I think nowadays with all the changes and things that have gone on you’d be silly not to… I mean with the abundance of choice and the things that you do actually get from a broker, ask the questions, make sure you know exactly where you stand and if you don’t know, ask again. You should be in a position to understand everything that is going on and how it works to put you in the best stead for when you do buy your house.
So good luck and I’m sure we’ll see you soon.