When buying a first home, listen to the pros

MOSES LAKE — Sometimes, the first step to homeownership is simply taking a step. 

“The best thing for us to do is to start with a loan application and let me talk with you a little while,” said Guild Mortgage Branch Manager Anne Fisher. “Let's figure out what are your needs, what are your goals.” 

In the Internet Age, we’re more accustomed to plugging keywords into a search engine than to making a phone call to an actual person. But the oceans of information available online can be overwhelming, leaving a potential buyer wondering where to start. A buyer who just wants to see if they can buy a house before looking at what’s available should call a mortgage broker, Fisher said. 

The first thing to do is to figure out where your credit falls on the spectrum from “Gold Star – Never Misses a Payment” to “Do Not Under Any Circumstances Loan This Person So Much As a Nickel.” The measure mortgage lenders use is the income-to-debt ratio, Fisher said. That’s figured by taking the amount you pay in debt – car payments, student loans, credit cards – and dividing it by your gross income. Multiply that figure by 100 and you have the ratio expressed as a percentage. If that figure is under 50%, you may be able to get into a home, according to the real estate website Zillow. If it’s 36% or less, your chances are much better. 

“Once we put all those pieces together, that’s where we come in,” Fisher said. “We figure out then, based on all those pieces, what programs are available. We like to have conversations with them, not just about what they qualify for, but maybe other products available that we didn't talk about and why.” 

The down payment is another thing that sometimes scares off potential buyers, but particularly for a first-time buyer, it doesn’t have to be. There are programs that will allow a first-time buyer who meets other requirements – income limits, perhaps, or some sort of economic disadvantage – to skip the down payment or to bundle it into the home loan. 

“There's zero down loans, there's down payment assistance programs out there,” Fisher said. “There's all kinds of things we can do for people. You don't need cash to buy a house if it's your primary residence.” 

Once the down payment and loan amount are worked out, it’s time to see what’s available on the market. Again, there are websites that can get a potential buyer started, but in the end, they’re going to be best off contacting a professional. 

“When you have the ability, if you can obtain financing and you want to buy … don't be afraid to give your Realtor a call,” said Johnny Reyes, a real estate agent at Windermere in Ephrata. “There's no commitment with a Realtor. A lot of people think that there's a fee up front. There's not. We're here to help the community. Reach out to your Realtor and get some answers. We're here to help you achieve your dreams. We have the resources, and we just need people to come up to us and ask us for those resources.” 

Sometimes the answer is simply that the buyer doesn’t qualify yet, Fisher said, but that’s no reason to give up.  

“There are times someone's ready right away,” said Kelly Price, a loan officer at Guild Mortgage. “Sometimes it takes several months. There's some times we work with someone for years to get them (ready to buy) … We take every application, every person that comes in here seriously, whether you're ready or not. And when you walk out of this office, you have a game plan. Am I buying a house today? What do I need to work on? It's never lost.”