How to negotiate a mortgage offer

Too many times, people who are getting home financing feel so pressured by the process and timeline that they finally put there hands up and accept what they are given.

Here is a simple list of things to do in order to negotiate your home financing:

1.     Go to the CFPB site and get educated about interest rates and products. They have current mortgage rates by region and credit score. It will give you a good sense of what range you might expect.

2.     Get recommendations for at least three mortgage loan officers (throw in at least one mortgage broker to the mix, as they have access to many wholesale mortgage lenders).

3.     Organize the material you’ll need to shop around, like debts, income, bank statements, etc. If you don’t have these organized, you’ll find the process of pursuing more than one loan officer at a time very, very difficult.

4.     Whenever you ask for a quote, make sure that ask that the quote is provided in a “Loan Disclosure” form. This is a government standard form and format that is designed to be easy to read, and includes all of the fees. Otherwise, you’ll get back snippets of information in email, etc. and you won’t be able to compare apples to apples.

5.     Pick the best offer and see if you can get them to shave off even more.

Extra tip: loan officers will not appreciate that you are pursuing multiple offers at once and may even stop working with you if you pressure them early on by telling them this. After all, they don’t want to waste their own time on a customer they may not be able to close. Best advice: keep quiet about all of your research until you have offers in hand.