Mortgage. What a word. I (as I’m sure many people do) have such a visceral reaction to that word.
Getting a mortgage has been by no means the most fun process of this whole first time home-buyer thing. But I’m sure anyone could tell you that. What I have found most frustrating is the amount of time spent asking questions that will not be answered and the amount of information we’re just magically supposed to know. Umm…HELLO PEOPLE…you are all well aware that we have never done this before so shouldn’t there be some reasonable amount of information that we’re given about this whole process?
Because we are purchasing a home and immediately doing construction on it we needed to find a loan that would allow us to do so. We got a great referral to a local bank for a Construction to Permanent loan which would bundle our renovation budget into the cost of the mortgage – sounds great, right? We thought so too. But what we quickly learned was that when you’re working with a small local bank, everything is significantly slower (“how is that even possible” you might be asking yourself). When all was said and done, we got what we needed by the required dates (used every last minute of time) and we’re on to waiting for our closing date to get here.
All that being said, a few things we have learned about the mortgage process:
- The attorneys set the closing date. After asking who was responsible for this numerous times, we finally learned that it was up to our the attorneys to do this, not the bank.
- It doesn’t matter how prepared you are when the process starts, you will have to re-send everything, so be prepared.
- Your mortgage representative and the underwriting departments may not be communicating with each other at all. This was probably the most frustrating part of the process since we kept asking for updates and being told “it’s in underwriting” only to find out the day before our contingency date that they needed additional/re-sent documents.
- Be annoying. Be very, VERY annoying. Ask everyone the same questions, over and over until you finally get an answer.
Now on to closing!
Pleasant To Pinewood 