When shopping for a mortgage, ask for a locked loan estimate, not a fee sheet. Fee sheets are unofficial and can change. A real loan estimate is government-regulated and shows you exactly what you'll pay.
When getting quotes from different lenders, you're probably going to get one of two things. Either a fee sheet, not official, or a loan estimate that's official. And a lot of lenders default to doing just the fee sheet because they can put whatever they want on there and it's not official. They're not bound to that. They're not legally binded. It's not a real document. And you'll notice this by usually the very top or the bottom. It'll say your rate, payment and cost could increase, could change. Get an official loan estimate. Before choosing a loan, you'll see that they have to put that disclaimer to show that it's not real to cover their behinds. We generally don' think there's much benefit or use to that. We would rather give you the real documents. We have nothing to hide. We want to give you the real loan estimate. And the loan estimate is a government regulated form that all lenders provide the same exact form. The only difference is you'll see the different lender's name and the loan officer's name. But it's the same standardized form, looks the exact same. So that's the document you really, really want. Because when they put it on the loan estimate and make sure that it's locked, they check the lock box at the very top right of page one. It could say yes or no. You want them to check yes, this is locked. If you have a loan estimate that's locked, it's, it's legit. The lender can't change it. Now, sure, there could be some manipulating on the ratios to kind of artificially get a better deal. But that's why we'd like to kind of look at the loan estimates to really compare them and dive deep to make sure we're actually comparing the same loan, the same loan to value, which would be down payment and the same credentials on it. But you're off to a really good start if you get an official loan estimate. I know that sounds very generic, but it says loan estimates across the top of the page. That's the legit document. The word estimate makes it sound kind of flimsy, but that's the legit government name for this document. So if you just get a fee sheet that has the huge disclaimer up top, it's as good as a piece of paper. We could be sitting at a bar and I could write down numbers on a napkin and say, here's your fee sheet. It's as good as that. So sure, it's a little preview of what the numbers may or may not be. But it doesn't mean it's locked. It means the market's impacting it every day. It doesn't even mean that they had to honor that deal or they ever had to have that deal when they put it together. It is just for informational uses. You're buying a house. You're buying a real house. You want real numbers. And that's why we feel so strongly about getting the actual loan estimate.
