Floor three
A purchase loan has to do something a refinance never does: satisfy a stranger, on a contract date, on a house nobody has valued yet. Almost everything that goes wrong in a purchase goes wrong because that was discovered late. This page is the loan side of it, in the order it actually happens.
Before you offer
None of these takes long. Each one, skipped, becomes a week of somebody’s time once there is a contract and a date on it.
The affordability question has an algebraic answer and it takes a minute. Do it before viewings, because the number you arrive at changes which neighbourhoods you look in — and it is far easier to accept a limit you set yourself than one an underwriter sets after you have fallen for a kitchen.
Run the affordability page →A pre-qualification is arithmetic on what you said. A pre-approval is a decision made after somebody read your documents. Sellers can tell the difference and so can your own budget: the verified number is often not the stated one, and it is far better to learn that in week one than in week six.
The difference, at length →Two years of returns or W-2s, thirty to sixty days of pay stubs, two months of statements for every account you will draw on, and identification. If you are self-employed, add the business returns. Nothing about this list gets shorter by waiting; it only gets more urgent.
What an application asks →From pre-approval to funding, do not open a card, finance furniture, close an old account or let a balance run up. Every one of those moves the ratios the approval was built on, and the file is re-checked shortly before closing rather than only at the start.
See what a payment is made of →Purchase programmes
A reverse mortgage and a cash-out refinance are not on this list, because neither buys a house. Everything else is here, grouped the way the index groups it.
Cash to close
“How much do I need?” is nearly always answered with the down payment alone. It is one of four things you bring, and on a low-down purchase it is not always the biggest.
The part of the price you pay yourself. It sets the loan-to-value, which in turn sets whether mortgage insurance is charged and how it behaves. It is the only one of these four numbers most buyers plan for, and often not the largest thing they have to bring.
Origination, appraisal, credit, title search, title insurance, recording, and the transfer taxes your state and county charge. They are itemised on the Loan Estimate you are given within three business days of applying, and again on the Closing Disclosure three business days before you sign. Read the second against the first, line by line.
Not a fee — money of yours, paid early. Interest from closing to the end of the month, a full year of homeowner’s insurance up front, and several months of tax and insurance to open the escrow account. On a first purchase this is regularly the surprise, because nobody counts it and it can rival the closing costs.
The deposit you put up with the offer to show you mean it. It is held by a third party and credited to you at closing, so it is part of the cash you were already bringing rather than a fifth cost — provided the contract’s contingencies are still intact when you need them.
The calculator for this
The affordability page solves for the price your income, debts and down payment support, and names which of the two ratio limits is actually binding — that is usually the surprise. The payment page then itemises what the monthly cost of that price is made of, including the mortgage insurance the programme you picked charges.
Whose calendar
This site publishes no closing time, and this section is why. A lender controls its own queue and nothing else on this list. Anyone promising a date is promising on behalf of three parties they do not employ.
Inspection window, appraisal deadline, financing contingency, closing date. Those dates are negotiated in the offer, not by the lender, and everything downstream is measured against them. An aggressive closing date agreed to in a bidding war becomes somebody’s problem three weeks later.
The lender orders the appraisal but is not allowed to influence it, and the appraiser is not the lender’s employee. How quickly it is scheduled and returned depends on how busy the local market is. If the value comes in under the contract price, the contract — not the loan — is what has to change.
Liens, unpaid taxes, easements, a boundary dispute, an estate that was never properly settled. Most searches are uneventful; the ones that are not can take weeks to clear, and no amount of lender urgency shortens a probate court.
Most delays here are a document nobody asked for until late — a letter explaining a deposit, an updated statement, a payoff figure. That is why the file is worth assembling early: the underwriting clock only runs while somebody is waiting on you.
What you can control is the file. Documents supplied before they are chased, questions answered the day they are asked, and no new credit opened — that is the whole of the buyer’s influence over the calendar, and it is worth more than any promise about it.
Questions
A pre-qualification is arithmetic on numbers you stated. A pre-approval is a decision made after somebody verified those numbers against documents — pay stubs, returns, statements, credit. Only the second one has been checked, which is why it carries weight with a seller and why it takes longer to get.
No. It is a conditional decision on you, made before there is a property. The file is re-underwritten against the actual house, the appraisal, the title work and your circumstances at the time of closing. Changing jobs, opening a card or moving money around between pre-approval and closing can undo it.
It depends entirely on the programme. VA and USDA allow nothing down for eligible borrowers. FHA and low-down conventional programmes start in the low single digits. Twenty per cent is the threshold above which conventional mortgage insurance is not charged at all — it has never been a requirement to buy.
Usually some or all of it, depending on the programme and the relationship. Gift funds have to be documented: a signed letter saying the money is a gift and not a loan, and a paper trail showing where it came from and when it arrived. Money that appears in your account without an explanation is the single most common cause of a late underwriting condition.
Once there is an accepted offer and a closing date to lock through. A lock has a length, and extending one when the closing slips usually costs money. This site publishes no rates and cannot tell you where pricing is, so the honest answer is to ask what a lock costs, what it covers, and what happens if the date moves.
Colour scheme
Each scheme is drawn twice — once for the light theme and once for the dark — and contrast-checked in both before it is offered here.
Built against WCAG 2.2 AA as a target. It has not been independently audited, so no conformance is claimed. If something here blocks you, that is a bug.