Is it better to use a Mortgage Broker or a Realtor when your a first time home buyer?
Our mortgage broker suggested a realtor to use to find the house. Get a mortgage broker first, and then if you want to do the searching yourself, your mortgage broker can help with the contracts, and you may be able to use this as leverage to lower your purchase price (by the commission amount to the realtor) Talk to your broker though, they can give you all the ins and outs.
Use both. A realtor will help you search for and find the right home & will help you negotiate the price and contract with the seller. A mortgage broker will help you get a mortgage to finance your purchase. See a mortgage broker first to determine what price you qualify to buy. Then tell a realtor what your price range is. Happy hunting!
Both. A mortgage broker will help, broker a mortgage, or the good ones will also advise on which type of mortgage will be better for you. A realtor will help you search for your home, run through hoops, etc. Son’t always use realtor that has listed a house, though, sometimes it is better to ‘have your own.’ We used both a mortgage broker and a realtor ‘of our own’, since we really didn’t know much about the mortgage intricacies, and we both didn’t have the time nor nerve to negotiate and buy a home on our own. Two good books you might try and read through thoroughly are the ‘Dummies’ books, Mortgages for Dummies, and Home-buying for Dummies’. These are easy-to-read, user-friendly books that we used as bibles for our home-search, and helped us understand everything, plus also gave us pointers on what to ask for with regards to our broker and realtor.
Neither! Well…kind of. I agree with a previous poster that you don’t need a mortgage broker if you have good credit. Go directly to a few banks and skip the middle man. As for a realtor: If you’re looking for a house in a fairly large city you can do your own research by checking out the MLS (multiple listing service) listings on the internet. Find a house on the MLS listing you would like to see, call the broker and schedule an appointment. After you view the house inform the broker of the specific type of house you are looking for and ask to see any houses he/she may have as an “exclusive”. (This means they would not list it on the MLS.) Do this for various brokers around your area. This way you’ll have many brokers helping you find your new home.
