Amazon link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1507673442
Books2Read link: https://www.books2read.com/u/3nOEgR
This book is written with the idea of helping the general public understand real estate loans. It is written from a perspective of being a loan officer and real estate agent. While there are lessons of mindset and how to think that might assist a beginning loan officer or an experienced real estate agent herein, it is not intended to be a technical work or one that is capable of creating a finished loan officer by the reading. In order to do that, I’d have to teach the ins and outs of processing, and that’s not the kind of book this is. I’m also going to talk about the interactions of the loan process with the purchase process, but from a point of view of understanding loans. Learning about what a buyer of real estate needs to know is a different subject. This book is to learn about loans, not buying or selling real estate.
This is not about ‘get rich quick’; this is about ‘learn how to get better loans while spending less money.’ It’s also about how to put yourself in a position where your loan will be approved when you apply for it, and how not to sabotage your loan approval by something you might do without knowing any better. What I’m trying to do here is teach an average person enough to understand the loan process, put yourself in a better situation before you start, and avoid the most common pitfalls, like the ones that caused the housing meltdown of 2005-2008, primarily on the individual consumer level. Readers should also be far less vulnerable to the most common scams in the loan market. While there is some general market material in this book, I’m always trying to show you how to make the most of your situation. I will start by discussing how to prepare to apply, proceed to show how to calculate how much loan you can afford, how to shop, compare, and choose loans, and what to do between application and recording. Notice I did not say approval or funding. Neither of those marks the end of the loan process, and through my website (www.searchlightcrusade.net) I have had a large number of conversations with people to whom that was not explained, and they proceeded to kill their own loan through ignorance of this fundamental fact. It wasn’t their fault – their loan officer should have explained it – but nonetheless the consequences were theirs to deal with.
The process can be byzantine, but is actually mostly intuitive and comprehensible when you understand how lenders and underwriters think, and how they make their decisions. Consumers don’t have to understand every dotted i and crossed t. It is sufficient for consumers to understand a few basic thought processes behind it all. I am going to explain the basics of what a credit report is, and how to improve yours. I’m going to talk about how to make yourself eligible with even comparatively small down payments, and how to avoid things which are common ‘loanbusters’, or reasons that loans get declined.
I am going to repeat myself quite often and deliberately so. Sometimes a new context will help you understand it better, sometimes repetition will help you remember it, sometimes you might just have skipped past it the first time without realizing the importance. The goal is for you to have a decent comprehension – not of all the nuts and bolts – but of the basic functioning of the metaphorical engine and major failure points.
One thing to keep in mind during all discussions of real estate and real estate loans is that the amounts of money involved are usually large – the equivalent of somebody’s salary for several years on every transaction. The temptation to fudge the numbers or even outright lie to get a better deal, or to get a deal at all, is strong. Many people don’t think they’re really doing anything wrong by fudging things a bit, but this is fraud. Serious felony level FRAUD. Fraud and attempted fraud are widespread. There are low-lifes out there who make a very high-class living at it (for a while). Every lender has to devote a large amount of resources to determining that each individual transaction is not being conducted fraudulently. To fail to do so would be to fail in their jobs to protect their stockholders and investors. I have told many stories about the most common sorts. But the reason everything in every real estate transaction is gone over with such a fine-toothed comb that adds thousands of dollars and much work to the cost of the transaction is that people lie, cheat and steal with such large amounts under consideration. Every hoop that anybody is asked to jump through has a reason why it exists, and often that is because somebody, usually many somebodies, have committed FRAUD based upon that particular point. Sometimes the people committing fraud are the alleged professionals involved in the transaction, and sometimes, the legal issue of fraud can be avoided with the proper disclosure on one page buried in a stack of other disclosures. So stay on your toes.
The idea behind this book is to improve your outcome. How to make you, the consumer, end up in a better place. How much better is a function of how much effort you care to put into it. With the knowledge in this book, even minor amounts of due care will put you in a position thousands of dollars better off than without, and avoid most of the worst pitfalls that have cost millions of people anywhere from tens of thousands of dollars to their homes. If you want to put in more effort, it can improve your final position even more, but the most important gains come from almost trivial amounts of effort at the right time.
Copyright 2015 Dan Melson. All Rights Reserved.
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