The investor advantage
Find Out What You Can Buy Before You Shop
The house you fall for is a late discovery. What you can buy is a lender's question, and it belongs first. Credit, income, and whether your job is about to change will set the size of the purchase long before a tour.
Talk to a lender while it is still an idea
I buy and operate rentals here, and the order that saves people is simple. Find out the dollar amount a lender will actually consider. Then go look at houses in that range. A Saturday of tours before that conversation is how a payment gets picked by a kitchen, not by the rent.
What the lender is going to ask
- Credit. Look at your own report before you sit down. Collections and old errors are easier to deal with when you are not racing a contract.
- Income. A salary the lender can read is a different file from bonus or commission income. If you are about to change jobs, ask the lender before you do it. A new job in the middle of a purchase is a common reason a file stalls.
- The dollar amount. This page leaves the down-payment percentage off on purpose. The percentage depends on the loan, the property, and your file. The number that matters is the dollars the lender will require, written down. That list, once you have a house, is cash needed before the first rent check.
This is general information. A loan quote is the lender's document, not mine. I will not name a rate or a program on this page. Two lenders can look at the same person and write two different numbers.
Then the rent has to live with that number
A pre-approval is not a reason the house will earn its keep. The rent, the costs, and the cash stay in separate columns. That is what ROI means here. The bills that come off the rent are the expense and fee breakdown. Once you know the dollar amount, the next question is what kind of house is worth thinking about. Who sits on your side of the table when you do start touring is buyer representation, and on many Houston purchases the seller pays that fee.
Let's talk while this is still an idea. I will walk you through the questions to take to a lender before you shop.