Most mortgage advice was accurate twenty years ago and never got updated. These six beliefs cost Texas buyers real money every year — usually by stopping them from applying at all.
Six beliefs that cost Texas buyers real money every year. None of them are true, and most of them come from someone repeating what was accurate twenty years ago.
Conventional loans go far below twenty percent, FHA lower still, and qualifying VA borrowers can put nothing down at all. Twenty percent lets you avoid mortgage insurance — that's a trade-off worth modeling, not a threshold you have to clear.
Mortgage inquiries made inside a short shopping window are treated as a single event by the scoring models, precisely so consumers can compare lenders. Shopping is the behavior the system was designed to protect.
They can't always get approved the conventional way, because good accounting minimizes taxable income. Bank statement programs qualify on deposits instead — which is why they exist.
Pre-qualification is a conversation. Pre-approval means a lender has reviewed your actual documentation. In a competitive market, sellers and their agents know the difference immediately.
Closing costs, prepaid taxes and insurance, and escrow funding are all separate. We put the full figure in front of you at pre-approval rather than at signing, because that's when it's useful.
Pricing varies by lender, by program, by credit profile and by how a file is structured. The structure is where a good loan officer earns their keep — and it rarely shows up on a comparison site.