So you’ve been preapproved for a mortgage and your real estate agent (hopefully also known as The Jim Dolanch Team) has found you your dream home and you’ve made the offer! The offer has been accepted or has been accepted with a few contingencies; either way you are well on your way to the American Dream of homeownership. It should be smooth sailing from here on out right? Wrong! The following actions could still put the chances of owning that dream home in jeopardy so it’s best to steer clear of them:
- Don’t Open OR Close Credit Accounts
Applying for a new credit card and being forced to wait for the application to be approved can look bad on your credit score, not good and can also delay your mortgage approval. Also, while you may think it’s a smart idea to transfer balances and cancel unused accounts it will actually look bad on your credit score, according to our source.
- Don’t Buy Extravagant Purchases
The main example of an “extravagant purchase” here is a car, but really anything with a big price tag should be avoided. Just because you secured the down payment on your dream home, doesn’t mean there aren’t other expenses you’ll need to save for, like: closing costs, home repairs, and utilities to name a few.
- Don’t Furnish The Home In Advance
We know decorating the home might be the most enjoyable part of the process for some, but wait before you do so! Some pieces of furniture like large TVs or couches could even be considered as an extravagant purchase. You should wait to purchase these for the reasons listed above in the previous action, but also because you’ll need to see how everything looks in the house. Just because the sellers decorated it a certain way, doesn’t mean you have to keep each room as they had it. You’ll need some time to make measurements of different areas and decide what you need to purchase for each room.
- Don’t Change Jobs
Even if the job pays more and is closer to your dream home, don’t accept it, at least not until after you purchase the home. Changing jobs will delay the home buying process for you and the sellers could move on to a new buyer with a more secure financial situation.
- Don’t Skip Bills
These bills include credit card bills, but also your basic utilities and anything that could affect your credit score. Again, just because you’ve already been pre-approved doesn’t mean that skipping bills won’t affect your score – because it will!
- Don’t Skip The Paper Trail
It’s important to keep track of all documentations throughout the entire process. Our source even says that documentations of your transactions will be needed for your lender. A good tip to keep track of these when you decided to start saving for a home is to create some file folders for each one of your regular bills – car payments, vet visits, health insurance, etc. Then when you are ready to buy a home create an additional folder about the home buying process. In here you should keep all documentations of the process from your pre-approval to homes you are interested in, to the final agreements.
- Don’t Spend Your Savings
This ties in to actions 2 and 3 but we can’t stress it enough – don’t spend your savings! The old cliché “Don’t spend it all in one place” certainly applies here. As mentioned while this might be one of the biggest purchases you make there are still some extra expenses you’ll need to save for like closing costs, home maintenance repairs, utilities, and furniture to name a few!
- Don’t Wait
Finally, perhaps the best piece of advice is – don’t wait! Once you’ve found that dream home, the longer you wait on it the less of a chance you have of purchasing it. If you see it on a Monday, it could be sold by the weekend. At most, only “sleep on it” and make an offer the next day because it could be gone before you get another chance to!
We hope this blog has you even more ready to buy your dream home. If so we encourage you to take a look at our featured listings and contact us to assist you in the process. Remember – don’t wait!
Happy Home Buying!
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Until Next Time,
Jim