TIPS FOR A SIMPLE LOAN APPROVAL

TIPS FOR A SIMPLE LOAN APPROVAL

Here is a list of useful tips to ensure an effortless loan process. These DO's and DON'Ts will help you avoid any delays and costly challenges with your loan approval.

DO’s
...
DO call us if you have any questions.
DO provide requested documentation promptly and in its entirety.
DO continue living at your current residence.
DO continue making your mortgage or rent payments.
DO continue to use your credit as normal.
DO keep working at your current employer.
DO keep your same insurance company.
DO stay current on all existing accounts.

DON’Ts

DON'T change your employment or marital status.
DON'T make any major purchases (car, furniture, jewelry, etc.).
DON'T change bank accounts.
DON'T make any large cash deposits into your bank accounts.
DON'T transfer any balances from one account to another.
DON'T close any credit card accounts.
DON'T consolidate your debt onto one or two credit cards.
DON'T apply for new credit or open a new credit card.
DON'T max out or overcharge on your credit card accounts.
DON'T take out a new loan or co-sign on a loan.
DON'T pay off any loans or credit cards, charge offs, or collections without discussing it with us first.
DON'T finance any elective medical procedure.
DON'T join a new fitness club.
DON'T open a new cellular phone account.
DON'T start any home improvement projects.
DON'T have your credit pulled or dispute any information on your credit report.

If you encounter a special situation, it is best to mention it to us right away so we can help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.

 

Questions? Let me know! 517-4959

Mortgage Tips: 9 Ways to Lower Your Monthly Payment

March 21, 2014 by Guest Author

We often hear information on how homeowners can use tactics like refinancing to lower their mortgage payments. But what about homebuyers? What tactics can you use to ensure you start out with the lowest possible mortgage payment?


Luckily, there’s quite a bit you can do as a homebuyer to keep your mortgage payments low. Here are just 9 ideas to get you started:


1. Boost your credit score


Your credit score is a big determining factor in your mortgage’s APR. And even a tiny difference in APR has a big impact on monthly payments (as well as interest paid over the life of your loan).


According to this FICO chart, average interest rates on a 30-year fixed mortgage range from 4.004% to 5.593% right now, depending on your credit score. On a $150,000 mortgage loan, the difference between the highest and lowest interest rates translates into $144 per month.


2. Save up a hefty down payment


A bigger down payment lowers your mortgage payment in several ways. A larger down payment means you borrow less, which of course lowers the monthly payment. The size of a down payment is also one factor used to determine interest rates. Higher down payments can qualify you for a lower rate. And with a down payment of at least 20%, you can avoid paying for Private Mortgage Insurance.


3. Avoid Private Mortgage Insurance


Private Mortgage Insurance (PMI) is added to nearly all mortgages where you put less than 20% down. This third-party insurance helps lenders get their money back if you default on your loan.


Typical PMI payments range from 1-2% of the outstanding principle on your loan, divided into twelve monthly payments added to your mortgage payments. On a $150,000 loan, for instance, PMI can add up to around $125 a month.


To avoid PMI charges, put 20% or more down on your home purchase. Or, if this is impossible for you, shop around for special loan programs that don’t require PMI. They’re relatively rare, but some local banks and credit unions do offer low down payment, no PMI mortgage programs.


If you do have to pay PMI, pay attention to your home’s loan-to-value ratio. As soon as you have 20% or more equity in your home, refinance or cancel your PMI.


4. Shop with at least three lenders


For some reason, many people are more likely to shop around for a good deal on a $100 vacuum cleaner than a $100,000 home loan. But you can save big by shopping with different lenders.


Even with the same mortgage amount, down payment, and credit score, different lenders will give you different mortgage plans. So take time to shop with at least three lenders before settling on the one you’ll work with to buy your home.


(Bonus: If you apply for mortgage approval with all of these lender’s within a 30-day window, you’ll only get one hard pull on your credit, so you won’t ding your score as much.)


5. Check out real estate taxes before you buy


While real estate taxes aren’t technically part of your mortgage, most lenders require that you pay a portion of your taxes with each mortgage payment. The monthly payments are put into an escrow account, and the lender takes care of making your tax payments.


Within a small area, real estate taxes can vary dramatically. So talk to a knowledgeable lender or do some research online to find the area near you with the lowest real estate taxes.


6. Compare homeowner’s insurance prices


Like real estate taxes, your homeowner’s insurance premiums will likely be rolled in with your mortgage payments, escrowed, and paid by your lender. But this doesn’t mean your lender can force you to choose a particular insurance company.


So before you sign on the dotted line for homeowner’s insurance, shop around for a policy that suits your needs for your home, and that features low premiums. Remember, you can often save on premiums if you bundle your auto and home insurance.


7. Pay for points


When you buy a home, you can choose to purchase discount points – which are fees you pay to the lender at closing to get a reduced interest rate. Usually, one point is 1% of your mortgage amount, and one point will lower the interest rate by a few tenths of a percent.


Sometimes, buying points is helpful, and sometimes it’s not. The key here is to talk with your lender about how much each point will lower your mortgage payments. Then, calculate how long it will take you to break even (in a very loose calculation) by dividing the money paid for points by the total monthly savings. For instance, if you pay $3,000 to save $40 per month, your break-even point would be 6 years and 3 months.


8. Consider a longer term


While short-term mortgages are nice for getting out of debt faster and saving a load on interest payments, they also result in higher monthly payments. When you’re shopping for a mortgage, compare 15-, 20-, and 30-year mortgage options. Look at both monthly payments and interest paid over the life of the loan to determine which option suits you best.


9. Downsize your home and your payments


The easiest way to downsize your monthly mortgage payments is to buy a smaller, more affordable home. It’s tempting to buy the most expensive home you can afford. Instead aim to spend no more than 20% of your monthly income on a mortgage payment. If you can also live close to where you work, you’ll save a bundle on transportation costs, too.


Can you think of any other ways to save on your mortgage payments?


Rob Berger is an attorney and founder of the popular personal finance and investing blog, doughroller.net. He is also the editor of the Dough Roller Weekly Newsletter, a free newsletter covering all aspects of personal finance and investing.

Can you afford to wait?

We, at KCM, have often broken down the opportunity that exists now for Millennials who are willing and able to purchase a home NOW... Here are a couple other ways to look at the cost of waiting.
Let’s say you're 30 and your dream house costs $250,000 today, at 4.41% your monthly Mortgage Payment with Interest would be $1,253.38.
But you’re busy, you like your apartment, moving is such a hassle...You decide to wait till the end of next year to buy and all of a sudden, you’re 31, that same house is $270,000, at 5.7%. Your new payment per month is $1,567.08.

The difference in payment is $313.70 PER MONTH!

That’s like taking a $10 bill and tossing it out the window EVERY DAY!
Or you could look at it this way:

• That’s your morning coffee everyday on the way to work (Average $2) with $12 left for lunch!
• There goes Friday Sushi Night! ($80 x 4)
• Stressed Out? How about 3 deep tissue massages with tip!
• Need a new car? You could get a brand new $22,000 car for $313.00 per month.

Let’s look at that number annually! Over the course of your new mortgage at 5.7%, your annual additional cost would be $3,764.40!
Had your eye on a vacation in the Caribbean? How about a 2-week trip through Europe? Or maybe your new house could really use a deck for entertaining. We could come up with 100’s of ways to spend $3,764, and we’re sure you could too!
Over the course of your 30 year loan, now at age 61, hopefully you are ready to retire soon, you would have spent an additional $112,932, all because when you were 30 you thought moving in 2014 was such a hassle or loved your apartment too much to leave yet.
Or maybe there wasn’t an agent out there who educated you on the true cost of waiting a year. Maybe they thought you wouldn’t be ready, but if they showed you that you could save $112,932, you’d at least listen to what they had to say.
They say hindsight is 20/20, we’d like to think that 30 years from now when you are 60, looking back, you would say to buy now…
Agents: How are you preparing to help Millennials understand the opportunity available to them TODAY, to become homeowners? Watch a free replay of our most recent webinar, "Spring Ahead in 2014: KCM's Action Plan for DOMINATING the Spring Buyers' Season" to find out the steps you need to take!

Goodbye Fairway! Hello Opening Day!

Opening day!!! Every baseball team in the majors gets to start on an even playing field. No wins, no losses, no errors and no home runs! Every team is working hard so they can win the last game of the year. What team is your favorite? Who will win that last game of the year?
 

The Jerry Ashford Team has moved out of our offices at Fairway Mortgage in Stillwater. We very much enjoyed our time at Fairway and will always remember the great relationships we had there. Our team is setting up shop in Oklahoma City! Realtors, clients and our referral partners will all have access to us and our offices.  What does this change mean to you? Absolutely nothing. We are taking applications and closing loans just as we always have. Our phone number is still the same: 405-517-4959. Our new email address is Jerry@jerryashford.com. Once we get moved in, we will have our open house where you can come out and meet the team. Start your season on The Jerry Ashford Team!

 

We will not be holding any events this week as we are moving. We are getting into our new offices as well as changing over email addresses, contact info and social media. It will be an exciting week but it will be a busy one!

 

The Jerry Ashford Team is dedicated to taking care of you, your clients and referrals. We are honored to help our veterans, New Home buyers, new builds, FHA…. Well, everyone! We will close on time, get docs out three days early and fund our loans on time! All the great service you have enjoyed with The Jerry Ashford Team over the last sixteen years is still alive and well.

 

Questions or comments? I would love to hear from you!

The Law of the Hook

By Todd Duncan The Law of the Hook says that a captivated audience stays to the end. That’s because the principle that keeps your eyes glued to a screen and your hands glued to a book is the same principle that keeps your prospects glued to you. You see, an audience is an audience whether in a sales office or a theater; and to keep an audience around, the per­formance must be captivating from the get-go.

Think about it this way: When was the last time you finished a book that didn’t grab you in the first chapter? If you’re like me, there are probably several books gathering dust on your shelves that just didn’t make the cut because they weren’t intriguing enough in the beginning. They didn’t grab your attention. And the same is true of salespeople who fail to capti­vate their audiences in the beginning—they are brushed aside for someone more alluring.

On the other hand, when prospects are captivated by what you offer to them and by the way you offer it, they are compelled to give you their business; and not just once. Quality, high trust salesmanship is like a great book or movie; it captivates right away and keeps one coming back for more.

The Hook

What’s your hook? Do you have one? Do you offer your prospects something so intriguing and captivating that they have to know the rest of the story—that they can’t wait to see the deal through to the end? If you don’t have a hook, it’s time you did.

Based on what you initially say, do, hand out, mail out, promote, or distribute to ask for business, can you honestly say that you would be compelled to place an order with you? Would you be captivated by you? Would you do business with you based on the impact of your opening performance? If you’re not sure, it’s time to change the way you sell.

ACT 1: THE APPROACH

This is the process by which you predetermine who your best prospects are, and then initiate high trust relationships with them by effectively setting an appointment to meet.

ACT 2: THE INTERVIEW

This is the process that follows your Approach in which you conduct a high trust interview to secure the shared essence between you and your prospects. It is also in this Act that you establish your prospects’ needs, their buying strategies, and the emotional fulfillment you must offer in order to meet their real needs and gain their business.
And now allow me to introduce you to . . .

ACT 3: THE SOLUTION

The Presentation is about offering captivating, fulfilling solutions to your prospects in order to secure their devoted business. And that’s where applying the Law of the Hook must begin, because even if you’ve made it this far with a client, a poor presentation can quickly make a prospect disappear. That’s why making an early impact is so critical.

Act 4: The Action

The most exciting part of any sales presentation is hearing prospects say yes after you’ve asked for their business. Once you’ve made an impact with your presentation, there will come a point when you must ask for the prospect’s business. If you’ve done everything right to this point of the sales interaction, Act 4 should be easy. In fact, there will even be occasions when you don’t even have to ask for business, but only confirm what a prospect has already made known to you.

The truth is that prospects actually close their own sales if you offer valuable solutions to their real needs and values.

As you’ve already learned from the high trust interview, prospects will tell you the precise benefits they are looking for from your product or service if you take the time to ask them in a professional, strategic manner. That means that when you move to your sales presentation, you can be confident that you’re offering your prospects exactly what they’ve told you they want. That’s what the Law of the Hook is all about.

Ultimately, if your audience is truly captivated—whether immediately following your solution offering or after some effective objection management and follow up—they will want to stay with you to the end. And in the elite echelon of high trust selling that means your business will realize the full value of their relationships. That is the ultimate goal of every sales relationship.

Mortgage approval is a must before house hunting

Great information from Jim Steward


Setting realistic and obtainable goals for the purchase of a new home will make it a much more pleasurable and satisfying experience. In order to confidently know your purchaseing power you need to get pre-approved.

Pre-approval for a mortgage is obtained by applying for a home loan with a Mortgage Lender; providing income and asset documentation, and authorizing a credit report to be pulled. A loan decision will be based on the review of that information.

Don’t assume anything.

Credit scores and credit profile are critical in today’s lending world. Loan programs have specific credit requirements. No lender can accurately quote an interest rate for a specific loan program without knowing your credit score. Also, no lender can use a credit report that was not pulled by their company. It may surprise you to know that if you pull you own credit report and go the extra step of getting a credit score, that score will not necessarily be the same as when pulled by a mortgage company. The credit request from a mortgage lender has a different scoring model. I am not saying that pulling your own credit is a bad thing (in fact it is a good idea to review your credit at least on an anuual basis) but be aware that there are some differences.

Income is analyzed and your qualifying income may be more (or less) than you think. For example, if you are receiving any income which is non-taxable (such as military housing pay, social security, etc.), that pay may be calculated as greater than it actually is due to the fact that it is not taxed. On the other hand, you may get paid over time, receive a car allowance, have rental income, or some other sort of side income that you consider regular income; that income must meet guidelines based on the length of time and the consistency with which you have received it. Job history also matters. A job change or a first job after college can still be considered if your previous experience relates to it. Education and previous similar work is part of the job history. The self employed and commisioned individuals will generally need a two year history of this type of emploment.

Funds needed to meet closing costs and down payment are also reviewed. Some programs allow “gifts” from family members or “down payment assisance” from non-profit organizations. Banks statements must be provided to verify available cash for closing. VA loans for eligible military families (both active duty & retired) do not require a down payment. Also, most mortgage programs allow the Seller to pay a portion (if not all) of the closing costs.

The American Dream of home ownership is very much alive and well. Get pre-approved before you begin house hunting. On top of every thing else this is a powerful tool in your negotiations. It tells the seller that you are a qualified buyer who is not only serious but able to buy their home.

Hire a real estate agent to ease the process of buying and selling properties

Hire a real estate agent to ease the process of buying and selling properties

Buying or selling a property is one of the most important financial transactions of anyone’s life. Real estate offers wonderful options for all those who are looking for a home to live or only for investment purpose. The decision of buying and selling real estate needs to be supported by a good deal of acquaintance and expert supervision. If you are looking for an option that can help you choose th...e right house for you, then going for a real estate agent is always a good idea.

A professional real estate agent is a licensed person, and has significant experience in the home buying and selling process. Thus, he can help you sail smoothly through the whole process. If you are still wondering about the reasons to go for the services of a real estate agent or to spend on the fees of an agent, then mentioned below are some of the points that can surely convince you to hire a real estate agent before you enter into a real estate transaction.

Their experience in the real state sector is the main reason for you to go for their services. As they handle all these things on daily basis, thus they can guide in the best way. In the real estate sector an agent acts as a shield, thus will protect you from all types of spam. They do their work efficiently and perfectly filter the options and wipe out all those options which are of no meaning for you. In this way they narrow down your search process, thus saving your time and energy to a great extent.

A real estate agent is the best source who can guide you about the area, neighborhood and the property. Although you can also gather some data related to these three sectors, but surely the data they have is much more than the information collected by you. Being into this industry, they can provide you the best guidance on pricing. Not only a good real estate agent helps you to get the property at the best price, but they also help you do the negotiations. The negotiation done by the agent is based on the demand, supply and many other factors.

These agents have a professional network which can be of great help when if you are looking for a house in any other area. This network also makes it possible for you to go through the vast options as per your needs and preferences, before you actually make your decision. Last but not the least, is the freedom from paperwork. Hiring a real estate agent makes the whole buying and selling process less stressful, as they are going to do the voluminous paperwork for you.

The real estate business is a ferocious one. However, taking the help of someone who understands this sector quite well is really recommended. So, if you are planning to buy or sell a home, then look for a reliable real estate agent and make this important decision of your life which you can cherish lifelong.