With mortgage rates as low as they are and with the real estate market picking up quickly, many lenders are working at max capacity! What can you do to help your loan officer get your loan approved on time?
Once you have found a home and written your purchase agreement, your loan officer will get your file finished. You can help by responding quickly to any request your loan officer has. You will need to provide some standard information (paystubs, bank statements and tax returns). Some of this information you may have already given your loan officer. There are going to be several forms that you need to sign. By signing them quickly and getting them back to the loan officer, you can help them get your loan processed sooner.
We need to order IRS 4506 tax transcripts. Right now, that is one of the biggest problems we are seeing. The IRS laid off a huge number of employees and so it's been taking anywhere from 5-10+ days to get transcripts back. Sometimes we can't get them if the form wasn't filled in correctly, so then we have to resend it to the IRS. If your loan officer asks you for help with the IRS, try to help them – that form is required by all lenders and you can't close without it.
We also will verify income. Sometimes that is very easy and we just need to go to the work number. Other times, we have to contact the borrower to get HR information and there are times we need the borrower to help us get the information - maybe just a phone call or an email to get the information we need.
One of the biggest areas that we have to follow up on is deposits into checking and savings accounts. Payroll deposits are not a big deal, we can see what those are. If you have large deposits, we need to document where they came from. So we will need copies of those checks -watch your deposits and maybe keep copies of the checks you deposit. That will make it easier for us to document those deposits.
As a loan officer, I try to avoid going back to the borrower any more than I need to, but there are times we need more information – or maybe the information you provide creates more questions! The sooner we can get everything put together, the sooner your file can get into underwriting for that final approval! By working together, we can get this done sooner so you can get into your new home!
Leslie Vanderwerf, NMLS ID#335509, American Mortgage & Equity Consultants, NMLS#150953 - Email - Website