Mortgage & Commercial Lending News.

At AMI Lenders, we believe 2022 is still a good time, especially for first-time buyers, to get a mortgage and purchase a lovely house for you and your family. Interest rates are still attractive compared to previous decades, and house price increases have slowed since the recent pandemic. Finally, buying a house with a fixed-rate mortgage is still a good hedge against inflation's effects.

Our outlook on real estate and life is usually quite positive at AMI Lenders. That's why our blog is choc-full-of upbeat advice on what to do and think about when you're evaluating purchasing a house or investing in real estate—always looking optimistically towards the future. But we noticed lately that we barely touch upon themes about your mortgage or hard-money loan once you have received the money. We expect our clients to meet all their obligations on time, but that is not always the case. As such, we thought it would be a good idea to touch on some thorny issues that can happen when things don't go our client's way. Hopefully, they will never materialize for you, our faithful reader.

A lot has been written lately about the future of mortgage rates and housing prices. Let's look at some data and figure out what it means for Real Estate Investors in Houston, particularly Fix and Flip or rental property investments.

Mortgage rates are increasing

Earlier in 2022, some industry experts put forth their forecasts as to the future of mortgage rates:

• Mortgage Bankers Association forecasted the average 30-year fixed to climb up to 4% by year's end.
• Fannie Mae predicted a 3.3% mortgage rate by the end of 2022.

Let us suppose that you are interested in getting a mortgage loan from us, so you call us to ask about our mortgage rates and loan terms. To make sure that we give you the correct answer, we need to know whether your potential application will be ranked "good," "fair," or "poor." One of the elements in your evaluation is pulling your credit report.

Many of our customers worry that pulling their credit reports will hurt their credit scores. So here we explain what happens to your credit score and suggest to you some tips you might want to follow when shopping for a mortgage loan. You might also want to read what the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a US government agency, has to say about this subject on their website: https://www.consumerfinance.gov/ask-cfpb/what-exactly-happens-when-a-mortgage-lender-checks-my-credit-en-2005/ .