Thinking About Purchasing our First Home

[confusticated]

My husband and I are trying to figure out the best way to go about purchasing our first home. Now our credit isn't great. His is probably a little better than mine. We pulled his credit record a few months ago and according to equifax his credit score is 648. We both have only one credit card a piece and we have only had them a few months with not a very large credit limit. we do make the payments on time. The only thing that is on my husbands credit record is quite a few hospital bills from the past.

Now that we are thinking about buying our own home, I suggested that we go through each hospital bill listed and pay them off one at a time while we are saving money on the down payment for our home. Now my question is this. Between the two of us we grossed 61,000 last year and will be more this year for i have received a pretty good raise this year. We don't at the present time have money saved for a down payment but are starting that now. The only other debt that we have is a car payment of 300 a month and our rent of 450 (if you call that a debt). I was wondering would it hurt to look into trying to get preapproved for a mortgage now or should we wait till the bills on credit report are paid off and we have enough for a down paymnet??? Any information would be greatly appreciated for we are so new to this....Thanks in Advance

:roll:

[firstsource]

There are a few lenders that have "special rules" now, that they are not looking for credit depth for 620+ scores, so that is not a major issue.

I would not pay off the medical bills at this time, as that may make your scores go down due to a change in DLA.

If you are able to negotiate it, you can find sellers that will discount the sales price up to 6%, and if you take that discount as a "seller paid closing cost" you can end up being able to purchase a home with less than 1K in closing costs that you have to pay.

Charles

[confusticated]

Thank you firstsource for the information. As we are new to to all of this and that helps us a little more. Hopefully, within the next six months we will be sitting in our new home but will be ok if it takes a little longer.