Before the Sign Goes Up: Why You Talk to a Lender First

Talking to the lender before the sign goes up gives you three things:

• The real number for what you can buy. Not the one from a website or a friend. The one that comes from your papers.
• Time. If something can be improved, like a debt or an account, you see it with months ahead of you and not days.
• The shape of the plan. With that number you know whether it makes sense to sell first, buy first, or coordinate both. Without it, you are choosing blind.

And one more thing almost no one considers: it takes away the fear or confirms it with facts. Either one is better than doubt.

It goes like this: a couple sells their home quickly and celebrates. Then they sit down with the lender and find out that what they can buy is less than they assumed. They no longer have a house to sell or time to move anything around. If they had had that conversation first, they would have known what to adjust, or they would have picked a different order to do things in.

I do not lend money. And I cannot tell you how much a lender will approve you for. The lender says that, with your documents in hand.

What I do is accompany my clients step by step through the whole loan process, from start to finish. I listen to your full situation, connect you with the right lender for your case, and stay with you through closing. Not every lender works with the same programs or the same situations, and that difference matters.

The first meeting lasts about half an hour, and it often runs longer. There I explain the whole process and you get all your questions answered.

If you want to keep going, I give you the list of every document that is needed. The next time we meet, you bring everything and we start the loan application. By then there is trust, and I can give the loan my full attention. Once the lender has its answer, we start looking at homes.

I walk you through all of this step by step the day we meet, with no rush.

Bring these questions written down:

1. With what I will have left from selling my home, how much can I buy? It is the question that puts both sides together.
2. How do you count my income? Especially if part of it comes from a business, bonuses, or overtime.
3. What happens if I still own my current home when I buy? It changes depending on the plan.
4. What can I fix in two or three months? A debt, a balance, a missing paper.
5. What documents do you need and in what order? So you do not gather them twice.

Write down what they tell you. It is your homework from the first meeting, and we ask for it complete before anything else.

It can happen. And it is not a closed door, it is a list. A "not yet" that is well explained tells you what is missing and roughly how long it will take, and with that there is a plan: what gets fixed, in how many months, when you ask again.

What is a problem is finding out about that "not yet" after your house is already sold.

The sign can go up at any time. The lender's number is what decides how calm everything that follows will be.

That is why the first step is not your house. It is that conversation, with no commitment and with nothing listed yet.

Do you know how much you can buy?

Send me on WhatsApp what you are thinking of doing and I will tell you which lender it makes sense to talk to first and what to bring. No commitment, nothing to sign.

I am Veronica Yeary, a REALTOR in Dallas-Fort Worth. I sell your home and find the next one with a single plan, and the whole transaction is with me, start to finish.

469-441-8890 · call, text or WhatsApp · veronica@veronicayeary.com