Buying A Home
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
What not to do before applying for a mortgage
I read that there's certain things that you're not supposed to do prior to applying for a mortgage like buying a car or getting a new credit card. Does anyone know what sort of time frame we're talking about? We are looking to buy a home early next year. We just bought a new car last month so would that be a reasonable amount of time? We have fairly high credit scores and not much debt other than the new car. I just don't want a higher mortgage rate because of the car. Has anyone else experienced this or were advised not to do certain things before applying for a mortgage?
Re: What not to do before applying for a mortgage
In a Suze Orman book I read (Young Fabulous and Broke).
She described that when you apply you should even keep your credit card purchases low or non-existent. The way she described it: even if you pay it off every month, if you spent $500 that month and intend to pay it off when its due they don't know that you will pay it off and that can go against you.
The car payment reduces your Debt to Income Ratio and thus lowers the amount you can borrow. A year later will not impact your FICO score, but the DTI ratio exists until you pay off the car.
Keep your TOTAL borrowing (house, car and any other debt) to no more than 40-45% of your takehome pay..
Don't open(or even just apply for) a bunch of new lines of credit
Don't close old lines of credit
Don't run up current lines of credit (so if you have a $1k credit line available to you, don't rack up $900 on that card. If you need to charge $900, put it on the card that has the $5k limit instead. It's the same amount of money, but a better used credit/available credit ratio)
Don't make late payments on anything.
And one DO.... Do save more cash than you think you will need. Houses are straight up money pits. They are wonderful money pits, but money pits nonetheless. When your pipe springs a leak at 11pm on a Friday night, soaking your electric panel in the process, and causing you to shut off all water and electricity in the house (including the electric heat) when it's 15 degrees outside, you need both a 24 hour plumber and electrician, in the middle of the night, and suddenly you are $1k poorer than you were when you started your day. It's no fun. (anyone care to guess how we spent our weekend? lol)