Talk to a local lender BEFORE you sell!

Yes, that’s right, before you decide to go through the process of listing your current home for sale, you too (just like a prospective buyer) should visit a local trusted lender – such as the specialists at Professional Mortgages, Inc here in Rutherford County – and get yourself pre-approved for the loan that you will be needing once your home is sold.

Why is this important?  Well, imagine you’ve been through some tough times over the past year or two and although things are looking better lately and your job is going well, you’re making good money and you can financially afford a new & larger or maybe even a smaller more customized home, you may have encountered a few hiccups along the way that lenders may not look as favorably towards now that their lending practices have tightened a good bit.  Keep in mind that just because you’ve had a mortgage in the past, this doesn’t guarantee that you’ll be able to obtain a new one now.  It’s a great credit builder if you have had a mortgage that you’ve paid on time for several years, but other lines of credit – such as credit cards, student loans, car payments, cell phones and utility bills, etc – also play a part in determining your overall credit rating and thus one of the most important aspects of qualifying for a loan.

You should make sure you do your due diligence early and really know what your overall credit rating and borrowing status looks like before you make the decision to sell.  You don’t want to find yourself in the situation where your current house is under contract and quickly approaching the closing and then you find out that you’re not quite in as good of shape to obtain that new loan as you thought.  At that point, you’d be faced with backing out of the current sale and any associated repercussions of doing such or completing the sale and then being forced to rent until your financial position improves.  I don’t believe that is the ideal goal you would have had in mind when you first listed your home for sale, so make sure you go through the correct steps so you won’t find yourself in an unfavorable situation several months down the road.

If you are at the point of preparing your home for sale right now, feel free to give me a call or send me an email and I’ll be happy to discuss the best strategic plan for ensuring your sale and ensuing purchase go as smoothly as possible.  I can also help put you in touch with a trusted mortgage specialist that can cover the entire lending process with you before you get started.  It may seem a little overboard to do these things before you even get your home on the market, but it’s never been a bad thing to be over-prepared just to be safe.  Click the following links to read through our “Sellers, Buyers & Finance Tutorials” before you get started.