When buying a home there are four main players involved and all play a key role in this process to ensure that the closing happens on time. The Borrower, the Realtor, Mortgage Broker and Title Company must all do their part to make it happen.

Lets start with the borrower. First things first. Obtain a credit-checked pre approval before you shop for a home. Get with a good mortgage broker and find out what you can qualify for. Use a mortgage calculator to determine what your monthly payments will given different scenarios. Make loan application as soon as possible and gather together every document requested. You don’t want the closing to be delayed because you took forever to send your loan officer a recent pay stub!

The Realtor must set realistic expectations upfront and throughout the transaction with the listing agent, the seller and borrower in regards to potential closing dates. Under current market conditions and changes in lending disclosure it is wise to plan for at least a 30 day close. Your realtor should provide the Title Companies contact info to your mortgage broker as early in the process as possible.

Your Mortgage Broker should be quick to take a written application and get all of the required disclosures submitted for processing as soon as possible. Here is where you will be provided with all of the various loan product options available to you. Your lender will help you understand timelines and anything that can impact the closing date. The most significant change in lending regulations that is affecting closing dates lies with the Truth in Lending Disclosure. The final APR cannot vary more than .125 from the initial disclosure. The crazy thing about this is that the Good Faith Estimate is what calculates the APR. Should the rename it Good Faith Exact? I don’t think so. It is an estimate for a reason. No one knows exactly what the total fees are going to be until you are well in to the transaction. For example, not all transactions need a survey. Fees vary depending on the loan product. Your APR will change from the initial application. And if it changes more than .125 your lender must re disclose this and you have to wait three days to close. The lawmakers are pretty stupid but these are the facts. To avoid delays lenders are having to scramble the week before closing to make sure that they properly disclose the APR to you. At that point its too late to switch lenders so what’s the point. However, it must be done to make sure you don’t suffer any closing delays.

The title company must gather the title commitment, insured closing letters and uncover any potential breaches of title as early as possible. They must also work proactively on providing a preliminary closing statement with accurate fees to lenders enabling them to issue the Truth in Lending at least a week before closing to avoid delays due to inaccurate APR calculations.

Everyone must work together to make it all come together. Open communication is vital so that everyone is on the same page. Find the right lender and realtor and you will be just fine.

http://www.4bestrate.com Use our mortgage calculator, find the best home loans, protect your identity with our premium credit monitoring and get a free credit report.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 16th, 2009 at 3:08 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.