Hello! To introduce myself, I was pretty active on Fatwallet deal side and occasionally got valuable/useful tips on the Finance area (e.g. how to negotiate on car prices, etc).
Anyway, we’re in thinking of buying our first house in the near-ish future and I thought folks here might be able to provide valuable insight around mortgage shopping. I saw this thread but was hoping to get a bit more since I feel like I’m clueless.
In case it helps, here’s my situation:
- Location: SF bay area (target zip: 94070)
- Target price: $1.6M ~ $2M
- Available for downpayment: ~$1.2M
- FICO: >820
- Income: $200k
Questions:
- Where do I begin for mortgage shopping? I looked at Zillow years ago, but when I looked recently, I see almost nothing: Sebonic, Zillow and NBKC
- What are advantages/disadvantages of getting mortgage from different types of institutions like Credit Unions, Big banks, Small banks, brokers, etc? I’m not even sure what all my options are.
- Any advice on putting 20% down vs more? As you can see above, I think I could put down a sizable downpayment, but with interest rates so low, I’m tempted to put only 20% down and keep the rest of it liquid to invest elsewhere.
- If I request a pre-approval from multiple lenders to try to get the best rate, will they do multiple hard credit pulls?
- Is there any way to take advantage of my high credit score? Everything I’ve seen seem to be “>760” as the highest tier.
Thank you in advance! Let me know if I should create a thread instead of asking here.