How Do You Know If You Qualify to Buy that Home?

Occasionally if we speak to a potential buyer on the phone or a visitor to a web receives a generic email explaining pre-qualification - a buyer can go postal, and mention that it is insulting that we question their credit worthiness.  My thoughts?  Excuse me! Have you been listening to the news?  Don’t take it personal, but a lot has changed in the last two years on financing.  How do you know you qualify to buy that home?

First of all I’m not psychic.  I do not know the buyers personal finances, their credit score, if they are n a lease unlti Jone 2012, if they own other properties they have to sell first, or if they have just declared bankruptcy after walking away from a home last year.  Secondly, I will not meet an unqualified buyer at a vacant home. It is pure danger in the current market we are in especially when we are meeting them at mostly vacant homes. I am not a fan of meeting serial killers at homes 5 miles off a beaten path. Buyers must be met at the office for personal safety.  On this rule there is no leniency.  With fewer buyers qualifying to buy homes this is a major red flag.  Those that are totally evasive and boisterous are hiding something.  If the buyer refuses to talk to a loan officer first, and is not forthcoming there is no need to meet them.  It isn’t insulting in my opinion to consider your own personal safety and to save my time for a buyer that is more appreciative of my experience and time.   I am not a taxi cab driver that goes around town with my meter off, and I am not a door opener for the unappreciative and insulting.  My therapist told me I don’t have to.

Lastly, it have been my experience that the louder a person yells, they are hiding something.  Perhaps other agents on different occasions have demanded proof before showing, and the caller did not pass the test or more simply they have an ego problem.  Either way, it is not my problem. Speak to any loan officer, and find out what you qualify to buy.  Answer the personal questions…do you have enough cash, do you have a down payment, closing costs it will take to purchase the home you are looking at?  I run a business, not a TV show.  There is no point at looking at a 350K home, if you can only afford 150K, things are not that bad!  Besides, that qualification you had 2 years ago in the Internet will probably not hold water these days.