Getting a mortgage isn't an easy thing to do. Before a lender will put down tens of hundreds of thousands of dollars, it wants to know that the borrower can handle the loan so that it will get paid back.
When you visit your lender to get a mortgage for your home, they will tell you the maximum amount that you are allowed to borrow. But how do they reach this total and what factors do they take into consideration?
Last week's economic news included construction spending and the CoreLogic Home Price Index for January. Reports for February included ADP Employment, Non-Farm Payrolls and national unemployment data.
Getting a home loan can be a challenging process, and a finicky one. Qualifying can be challenging and once a buyer gets approved, it can be surprisingly easy to derail the process.
A mortgage pre-qualification is an initial estimate of what type of mortgage a borrower could get. It is limited, though, because it's only based on what the borrower tells the lender, which might not be the same as what the lender finds out when it goes through a full process of analyzing the borrower and his credit.
Last week's economic news was mixed, with new home sales increasing and weekly jobless claims higher than expected.
Case-Shiller and FHFA home price reports reflected slower growth in home prices. Mortgage rates moved higher for the third consecutive week.