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

And in essence, if you do put down anything less than 20%, then you're gonna have to pay mortgage insurance in the form of a mortgage insurance premium or PMI, private mortgage insurance.

So you can put down 5%.

You can put down 10%.

Many lenders will let you put down 15%, of course.

But if you don't have at least 20% equity when you're walking in the door, you will have to pay essentially a surcharge every month in the form of monthly insurance.

Your credit score is hugely important when it comes to buying a home these days.

So you absolutely want to make sure that your FICO score is in tip-top shape.

And what that means in terms of mortgage lenders is at a minimum, most want to see a FICO score of

620 points or better.

That's kind of like the bare minimum, the cutoff.

And again, your FICO score ranges from 300, a low of 300, and we hope you're nowhere down near there, to as high as a perfect 850 FICO score.

So 620 is about the minimum to get a yes from most lenders.

But then if you have a 700 or better FICO credit score, then you are deemed to have good credit and you'll be able to get good loan rates and terms.

I always try to have people be in what I call the perfect credit scoring range, which is really a 760 to an 850 FICO scoring range.

And if you do fall into that category,

Banks are going to fall all over themselves to do business with you.

Your credit union, et cetera, they will give you the very best loan terms and rates that are available in the marketplace.

There are a number of fairly straightforward steps that anyone can do to boost their credit score and sometimes to do so fairly quickly.

One is if you're already a renter and you have not yet made the leap to homeownership, you can add your rental payment history to your credit reports.

Now, you personally can't do this.

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