Every problem I have ever had to solve in week four of a purchase was visible in week zero. Not most. Every one. The difference between a calm file and a frantic one is almost entirely whether somebody looked during the fortnight when nothing appeared to be happening.
Day one to three: find out what your income actually is
Not what you earn — what an underwriter will call income. Salary is simple. Bonus, commission, overtime and second jobs usually need a two-year history and get averaged. Income that started nine months ago frequently counts as zero, which is a shock if it is a third of what you take home.
If you are self-employed, this is a bigger job and it starts earlier. There is a whole piece on it.
Day three to five: pull your own credit and read it
You are entitled to your reports and you should look before anybody else does. What you are checking for is not the score. It is: accounts that are not yours, a collection you settled that is still showing open, a balance reported at the limit when you paid it off, an address you have never lived at.
Those things take weeks to correct and they are boring rather than difficult. Doing it while you are still browsing costs nothing. Doing it under contract costs the contract.
The score is a symptom. The report is the thing you can actually fix.
Day five to eight: work out where the cash is
Every dollar of your down payment has to be traceable. Two months of statements for every account it passes through, and any deposit that is not obviously payroll will be asked about. This is the single most common source of last-minute paperwork.
Two specific traps. First, cash. Physical money deposited into an account is generally unusable no matter where it came from, because it cannot be sourced. Second, gifts. A gift from family is completely fine and completely normal, and it needs a letter and a paper trail. Get it into the account early so it seasons rather than arriving three days before closing.
Day eight to eleven: stop doing things
- Do not open a credit card, however good the offer is.
- Do not finance a car. This one closes more files than anything else on this list — the payment goes straight into your debt ratio.
- Do not change jobs if you can avoid it, and especially not from salary to self-employment.
- Do not move money between accounts for no reason. Every transfer is another statement somebody has to read.
Day eleven to fourteen: talk to somebody, then get pre-approved properly
A pre-qualification is arithmetic performed on numbers you said out loud. A pre-approval is arithmetic performed on documents somebody read. Sellers here can tell the difference, and in a competitive week it is occasionally the entire difference.
What you should come out of that fortnight with is a number you believe, a list of the towns whose tax rates you can live with, and a clear statement of the one thing in your file that is going to be awkward. There is always one. Knowing which it is is the whole point.
Written for a demonstration. Nadia Botelho is an invented broker and this article is example content showing what a real practitioner’s writing would occupy. It describes how these things generally work; it is not advice, and no figure in it is a quote.