Lynette Khalfani-Cox

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97 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Mar 2023 last heard Mar 2023

Lynette Khalfani-Cox’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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WSJ Your Money Briefing · Buying a Home? Here’s What to Do Before Starting Your Search · 31 Mar 2023 podcast
One of the biggest challenges for people when it comes to home ownership is that they've kind of been taught that it's only about the mortgage payment and that equals affordability when nothing could be further from the truth.
I really do think that the vast majority of Americans underestimate not only the amount of work that it takes to go into buying a home, but what it takes to sustain that house.
Because sustainable home ownership is really what it's all about.
We've seen, obviously,
In recent years, through a number of financial setbacks and recessions that we've had, that foreclosures have hit certain people, whether it's due to job losses, divorce, a whole bunch of factors.
And then not to mention the fact that home prices themselves have become so out of reach, frankly, for a lot of folks.
I do think there's a lot more than the average person considers when it comes to weighing home affordability.
Certainly the banks are going to give you an indication of what they think you can afford, but I'm always telling people that that's really not the true barometer that you should use.
A bank is going to ask you about your DTI or your debt to income ratio.
They're going to assess your overall obligations and then come up with a figure that they think is manageable.
But frankly, the bank doesn't know all of the rest of what's going on in your personal life.
They don't know, for example, if you plan on maybe going back to school or getting a graduate degree.
They don't know if you might be in the middle of a separation or a divorce.
They don't know if you're planning to have a baby or to add to your family.
So you have to always take into account not just the kind of nuts and bolts in financial terms of what a lending officer or a bank says that you can afford, but you have to also think about the stuff that they don't know.
They will ask you the basics around that.
And a lot of it is frankly tied to what they actually see on your credit report.
And so when it comes to a whole host of other things, the bank doesn't know how frequently you eat out every month.
And that's not really their concern.
They don't know whether or not you plan to travel in the summer or at any given point during the year.
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