In a time with a great deal of uncertainty, it is important to remember that this, like everything is temporary. It is important to remain focused and leverage what we can while we all go through this unprecedented time in history. This will pass quicker than you know it, and you’ll want to be well prepared when the housing market opens back up.
I am anticipating a very competitive housing market when things go back to normal and that is why I am laying out what I consider to be the most important things that you can be doing as a buyer if you aim to purchase a home this year.
The first tip that I would give to a prospecting home buyer during this time is to save money. We are all cooped up in our homes and have limited options available to us to spend money on. This is a perfect time to settle in and and live as minimally as possible.
Avoid the erg to purchase anything that you otherwise wouldn’t buy. It is easy to spend your days shopping on Amazon.com when you are sitting at home bored out of your mind. Use this time to get your money’s worth out of your Netlix and HULU subscriptions and soak in the benefits of all of the money that you aren’t spending on the normal budget busters.
The second thing that you can be doing as a buyer during the lockdown is to select the mortgage lender that you want to use and begin the pre-approval process. In our market, most lenders are still working from home and available for all of your mortgage needs. Again, this is a temporary situation, so this is a great way to make sure that all of your ducks are in a row so that you may give yourself a competitive advantage when the market opens up again. Also, this is a perfect time for you to be gathering all of the normal mortgage documents that the lenders are going to ask you for. Doing that will make the process much quicker and less stressful after you have found the home that you want to purchase. It is a lot less fun to run down all of these items when there are a lot more fun things to be doing!
The last thing that you can be doing is repairing any damage on your credit report. Whether you are credit qualified or not, this is a great thing to do. Increasing your credit score can help you get qualified if you aren’t already credit qualified or help you get better terms, loan options, down payments and interest rates. I suggest hiring a third party company to help you dispute any old or inaccurate marks on your credit report. It is their job to reach out to all three bureaus and dispute every little thing on your report. Once they send the disputes, whoever put it on your credit report has 30 to respond and prove that the marks are complete and correct. If they can’t, the mark has to be removed. Right now, many of the companies are short staffed and don’t really want to waste the resources messing with this kind of thing right now. Especially if it is an old collection that was paid off or something. This step could be very beneficial.
As we move forward from here, remember that this will pass as everything does. Try to leverage this time and make the best of it by giving yourself a competitive advantage when the market returns to normal!
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