Buying your first home

CHICOPEE, Mass. (Mass Appeal) - A home is an investment. When you own your home you can create your own personal style and enjoy having something that's all yours. Discussing some common questions for first-time homebuyers is Dean Harrington, Chief Executive Officer at Shamrock Financial.

If you are going to run the Boston Marathon in April or climb Everest in May, the first thing you would do is go to a doctor. You would say, what would I do to prepare myself to do this?

Same thing applies when buying your first home. First thing, get in touch with a mortgage lender. What you qualify for and what you don't qualify for. What are some of the pitfalls that could come to you in home ownership and bullet proofing yourself to get ready for the process. The first step should be to a mortgage qualifier.

You should approach a mortgage by dealing with a mortgage loaner originator. What you should do, interview that lender. Asking him or her specific questions. One of the questions I really like to ask the originator of the loan professional to tell you about the last mortgage transactions that they closed. The last home that was purchased that they worked on. If they don't give you much detail and say it was a house, buyers, there was some sellers and everybody smiled at the end, you don't want that. You want someone who can be able to tell you what program it was, what rate, what the pitfalls, good things were. That is the detail they want. This is something you are doing for the first time, first time home buyer. You are not sure what to expect. You are relying on that person to lead you through everything.

You are a job interview. The other question, paramount to ask them, watch for your way. Negative comments. The realtor was an idiot. The person was hard to deal with, he didn't want to buy, she did. Run from that person. I would sit down with 2-3 lenders, big on dealing with local lenders obviously because they know the market and marketplace, they will put you in touch with the best realtors in the area. They will quarterback the process for you.

Not like you have to go to one place and say, this is where I will get my mortgage. You can shop around. You should shop around.

You have to talk to some professionals. Find out how long, direct lender, find out the decision whether you will be approved or not, made locally or somewhere else? What is the turnaround time? If average turnaround time is over 30-45 days to turn you around and close you? Then you have risks with rates. Your rate might expire during that.

Should be able to close in 28 days. Should be able to. We can fast track it at Shamrock Financial in much less time than that. Not try to fast track so many, what we do is clog the system with so many fast tracks the average person only close in 28 days.

Most are HUD loans. FHA, VA loans, 3.5 percent down. Particularly, this area, Springfield, Chicopee, points north and west, still USDA loans are 0 percent down.

Rural area, designated USDA. Farm loans, credit score requirement is a little bit less than FHA. They are outstanding loans. You can't do that in the center of Springfield, obviously. More rural areas. It is important to ask those questions when you visit with the mortgage lender to say, what is the best loan for me? What is the best for us?

I would be armed and asked them to tell you, him or her, tell you the difference between FFA loan and FHA loan and stumble and don't know that, you can do better than that. You can do better.

Interest rates are incredibly low. Low Mid 4s, generally less. Variable rates are popular again. Caps are so solid. Not heavily discounted. Much safer than they used to be. Most of them are fixed for five years. You have some protection there. I'm not advocating adjusted rates for everyone. The fact with rates this low, you don't need to. The big thing is, when people say, how low are rates? Are rates low, house prices are low.

We use something called home affordability MIP deck. Index that measures someone's median income price of a home with medium income of people with medium sales price to see where people fall, in this area, 174 percent which means the average person renting right now has 174 percent of the necessary means to buy a home.

We deal with a lot of people that are not ready. Don't have enough down payment and credit score might be less than what we want to see. We begin to work with them on a process to get there. We are growing in Massachusetts. We have been Massachusetts mortgage lender for many, many years. Since 1991 I believe.

We are actually growing in the market with lender in Rhode Island. We are pretty far up there on the Massachusetts list and continuing to grow. One of the things, in spite of unemployment the way it is right now, we are hiring and attracting top quality loan originators that answer interview questions properly. When people go to see, they clearly can trust you. Important to trust that person, have you a lot of questions for. It is