Finding A Home - Finding The Loan

Let's start with finding a home. You may already know the neighborhood you want to move to, but if not, there are great tools on the Internet to help you decide where to move. Just search for "city profile" or "neighborhood profile" in a search engine and you'll find a site that can give you valuable information. For example, you'll be able to find out about a city's population, median age and income, unemployment rate, percentage of population that are Democrats or Republicans, median home values, teacher-to-student ratios, demographic make up, information about the climate, overview of the crime in the area, air and water quality, sales and income tax for the city, and even information about religion.

It's important to know how much you can afford to pay on a home in addition to knowing where you'd like to live. You may think that this is just a personal decision, but there are critical objective factors that determine how much money you might be able to obtain. These factors include your debt, income, and credit score. Free mortgage calculators found on the Internet can help you know the maximum loan amount a lender might give you, as well as how much you could save by making extra payments, whether it's better to rent or buy, and what your monthly payment might be (an important figure to know!).


Now that you have an idea of where you want to move to and about how much you can spend on a home, you need to find houses that are both in your desired neighborhood and in the price range you want. The Internet has websites where you can type in a specific address and get an estimated value of your desired home. Alternatively, you could enter a zip code or city and see an aerial map, move the map around, zoom in, and be shown an estimated value for every home on a street. When you see a house you're curious about, you can select it and see a photo taken from the ground as well as information such as square footage, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, when the home was built, the size of the property, what type of roof it has (shake, asphalt, etc), etc.

If you look for a home as described above, most of the homes you find will probably not be for sale. So an alternative method is to search first for homes that are for sale in your desired neighborhood, and once you have found one, use a valuation tool to see if the sale price is in line with the estimated value and with the value of neighboring homes. The online valuation tool you use may be able to limit results to homes that are on the market, or you may want to use one of the many other websites that show homes for sale. The help of a real estate agent can always be useful in addition to these online resources.

If you're like most people, you'll need to obtain a mortgage loan in order to buy the home you decide on. While many loan programs are similar, lenders do differ. When choosing where to get a loan, you might consider the following questions. How quickly can this lender close your loan? What types of loan programs does the lender have, and which loan is best for you? How competitive are the lender's rates? How convenient is the lender? Will you be able to upload supporting documents over the lender's secure system or will you have to spend money to mail the documents? Will you have to drive somewhere to sign the final documents, or will the lender send the notary to your home or office?

The tools mentioned above will assist you in finding homes for sale, learning home values, researching cities, calculating how much you can afford, and finding the best mortgage lender. Much success to you in your move!

By: Direct Mortgage

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