Buying a Maine home, getting a house loan.

What are the hurdles set up to clear today at a local Maine bank for financing your own place?

No longer just one flavor of mortgage loans for a Maine home. The days of just, only one route of saving up, going without to get a pile of cash large enough.

To plop down 25% of the Maine home property’s purchase price are over. Long gone.

When you spy with your little eye “the one” you want to start out in for “home sweet home”. And the sticks and bricks are all you can think, dream about through out your home buyer’s days and nights.

Now options to buying a Maine home are growing in number to custom make the best fit for your financial situation.

And considering the all important property listing the buyer has his or her heart set on owning.

To four walls and a roof. To raise a family in. To see the house in Maine equity increase as the mortgage payments chips away slowly. On the loan amortization schedule debt securing the Maine home for bank lending collateral. Learn more about Veteran Admnistration (VA) home loans. One neat no down payment home loan program if you served in the armed forces. The details on a VA home loan in Maine.

The requirements to get a loan for a Maine home start with your all important number, the credit score. That number that takes years to build up, to repair if dinged and beat up. And so little time to see it get riddled with holes and shrink rapidly because of life events, poor spending impulse control.

 For a conventional Maine home loan, a FICO score of 620 or higher is needed.

For a FHA Maine home loan, 640 or higher but in some cases the score can be as low as 580 to 640. A good Maine banker can help you sort it out and see where you end up for the best odds to getting your own place. 

VA loan credit scores for a Maine home buyer should be 620 or higher.

But like anything, there are options for 580 to 620 available for Veterans to explore.

With USDA Rural Development loans a 620 FICO score or higher is one of the banking requirements.

The many flavors of Maine banking home loans have opened up new, exciting lending options. To get folks out of the rent rut earlier, quicker, cheaper. To stop horsing around in the getting into a house loan process.

Two years or more on the job, in the same line of work helps when the Maine bank loan arranger fills in the blanks on the mortgage application. Stability in employment is one more important consideration in getting a Maine home loan mortgage green light approval.

No longer do you have to squirrel away large 20% down payments for a Maine home loan.

But if you have that kind of savings, an inheritance or lottery winnings, it can wipe out some closing costs such as mortgage insurance fees. Will help you pull off a better interest rate on your house loan.

No down payment mortgage loan borrowing options still do exist. VA and USDA-RD Maine home loans are good examples to explore.

 FHA home loans with 3.5% are one more house buying route to take.

Conventional loans with 5% down payment requirements are typical too.

Mortgage insurance for to allow for banking transactions for 5% up to 19.99% down payment home loans mean an added monthly expense.

But you are not renting, waiting for your Maine home dream to come true either.

Debt to income ratios for buying a Maine home. As of 1/10/2014 all recurring debt on home mortgages, car and student loans, credit cards are to be at or lower than 43% of gross monthly income. The ability to repay guidlines are important because the bank does not want your place.

You the house buyer don’t want to lose your Maine home either through foreclosure either.

And find yourself out on the streets, sleeping in your car. Or sliding back down into the slipperty steep slope of renting not owning you worked so hard to climb. To square one in the game of getting your own Maine home.

The requirements to getting a Maine home loan, a mortgage on a house  They also zero in on the property itself. All too often the Maine home buyer is pre approved for a certain price range.

But Maine houses for sale in that price bracket won’t qualify for the banking standards the program calls for so condition of the place is very important.

If the Maine home has peeling paint, needs a new roof to stop the leaking. If the heating system is shot.

Froze up along with all the rest of the plumbing.

Because of a foreclosure middle of winter walk out the door.

Abandoning ship by the last Maine home owner, someone has to step up to do the renovations, repairs, updates.Take care of the many loose ends that pile up. Maine home buyers who lose a home stop making payments. No repairs done either.

The job jar of repairs escalates skyward. To over flowing and with lack of heat, any normal TLC just floors the decline after a couple Maine winters. In the “no one home, no one seems to care” process of losing a place.

Before any Maine bank can give the both thumbs up to the “Next!” Maine home buyer in line to give it a whirl.

Hollering if everything checks out on the clipboard. Those all important three little words. The “clear to close” instructions to have the formal signing of that thick stack of paperwork. The one needed to allow a Maine real estate closing, the home loan mortgage financing to kick into gear. So the renter becomes an home owner.

If the Maine home buyer qualifies for a house loan but does not have the means or expertise to one by one take care of issues the bank appraiser raises about the property listing during his or her inspection. And the seller does not pitch in, the house buying process stalls. The trip to the closing derails.

If no closing costs get brought out of someone’s wallet, purse to pay the attorney, the appraiser, bank application fee. To start the escrow kitty for house insurance and property taxes, no dice too.

Money to prime the pump for repairs, for closing costs on the Maine home buying have to be secured from some party in the round robin.

A down payment gift from family members with no strings attached might be possible. Every Maine home buying, loan mortgage financing program provides for a little different twist of what is allowed or not.

I’m Maine REALTOR Andrew Mooers, ME Broker

207.532.6573  |  info@mooersrealty.com  |  MOOERS REALTY 69 North St Houlton ME 04730