June 2, 2022
After you have gotten all the planning done, and after you have saved for your downpayment and gone house hunting, you’ll come to the place where you are finally ready to apply for a home loan.
What do you need to know about this process and how it works? One of the most important things to decide is how much personal help you might need to apply.
There are three basic options that may be open to you depending on the lender. Whether you need to pre-qualify, get pre-approved, or actually begin the application process itself, your lender may take a specific approach to how your loan documentation and application data is submitted.
Some lenders take a very hands-off approach, allowing you to apply and submit online without requiring any help from a representative. For those with experience applying for large loans or mortgages, this may be ideal; not so if you are a borrower who doesn’t work much online or if you don’t know how to submit documents electronically.
In typical cases, financial institutions that allow a 100% online experience may offer assistance if needed but may not require you to interact with a human to get your FHA loan application submitted, but you may have to wait for a callback or return email to move forward.
Some lenders offer a loan application process that’s a happy medium between a fully online application and a process that requires some assistance from a representative. In these cases, you can expect to fill out a form with some basic information.
Some lenders may allow you to actually start the application but not complete the entire process. Once you have filled out the initial form you may have to wait to be contacted for the next step.
And then there are the lenders who really want to walk you through the loan application. These financial institutions may require an in-person visit or a phone call to start the process and you may have the option of submitting forms electronically but not without the lender’s help.
This sort of personal service is very helpful for those who have never applied for a mortgage before, or who might feel intimidated about submitting their personal data online.
Why do we mention these approaches and bother to make an entire article out of them? It’s simple, really. If you have a fixed idea about how your mortgage application process should go, encountering a different type of approach might lead you to believe there’s a scam at work.
That sort of thinking is crucial to avoid being taken advantage of; knowing what is standard practice in the mortgage lending industry helps you to spot something that could be a scam.
Lenders who refuse to accept a loan application without an in-person visit might seem a bit unusual if you aren’t familiar with that approach. Knowing that it’s an actual practice and not just something a con artist might try to fool you with? That is an important part of being an informed borrower.
Joe Wallace has been specializing in military and personal finance topics since 1995. His work has appeared on Air Force Television News, The Pentagon Channel, ABC and a variety of print and online publications. He is a 13-year Air Force veteran and a member of the Air Force Public Affairs Alumni Association. He was Managing editor for www.valoans.com for (8) years and is currently the Associate Editor for FHANewsblog.com.
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