Was buying a home on your New Year’s resolution? This Storii Time kicked of 2025 with tips & tricks to get your finances in check when preparing to buy a home.
Saad: You know that crazy emoji? The crazy person? Like that’s me. Yeah, yeah, just counting on blessings. She’s feeling a lot better today.
Mike: Well, yeah, let’s roll through this and then you can get back to vacation Saad.
Saad: Yes, sir. Yes, sir. think I want to tell everybody really quickly, just kind of like how this topic.
Mike: Hey, let me ask that question because that’s exactly what I was going to ask. Anyway, yeah, by all means.
Saad: So my buddy, Harris, he reached out to me a couple of weeks ago, want to say, maybe actually was last week. He texted me and he’s like, hey, like I’ve been talking to some of my friends here. He lives in New York City, right now, or in that area. And he was like, you know, like one thing that came up was like, there’s lots of content out there about about like, okay, now you have money. What do you do now? What are the steps, right? Like what are the steps? What’s the process? Who do I talk to? All that kind of stuff, right? What there’s not a lot of content out there about is, okay, like even before you get to that stage, the six months, the 12 months, the 18 months, maybe more before that, what do those look like, right?
Saad: It’s a really good question and he’s absolutely right It’s not talked about enough because the professionals in the industry who are putting out content are incentivized to really just focus on the people who already have money, right?
Mike: Yeah, you just like you’re catching them at the raise your hand like…
Saad: That’s just is what it is, but he’s right. There should be more stuff about that. How do you help those people get ready as opposed to just having them fend for yourselves? And so I think he made a good point. And by the way, he’s got a good job. He does pretty well himself. And if he’s thinking about it, I gotta imagine there’s a lot of other people that are thinking about it and who are not in as fortunate of a situation. Again, I don’t know the details of the situation, but it’s like, I think that’s the impetus of this conversation.
Saad: In fact, we had something else planned for today’s yard, but we changed it up because we thought it was so important to talk about, especially to start the year.
Mike: Right, right, it’s perfect, yes.
Saad: And things like that. So that’s why we’re here, and I guess that’s a good reminder for folks too. I mentioned in my story, I think it was yesterday, if you have suggestions for things that we should be talking about, or things that are on your mind, as it relates to real estate or some ancillary topic, let us know.
Mike: We’ll gladly be your puppets. Just give us a topic.
Saad: Happily. Give us topics. We’re always looking for things that folks want to know more about, or maybe just want to hear some banter about. We’re here for that.
Saad: Mike, like, so what are your kind of initial thoughts on that? Like, what do you, where do you think like folks should start? How far in advance? Like what are the kind of the key things that folks need to be thinking about? You know, and then we’ll go from there.
Mike: Yeah. Well, I think like, instead of picking a time, it’s really like, if you get an understanding now, that’ll give you your timeline of things, right? Real estate, it is fun. And it’s wonderful to, you know, close a house with somebody and they get to go and enjoy that. But ah it’s not easy. Like it’s all smiles at the end. But it’s not an easy process. And it’s a very like monumental thing to achieve in your life. So I think from the psychological aspect of it…no matter where you’re at right now, you might even beat yourself up and be like, I’ll never get this, or like, oh, I’m years away, or something, some story that you tell yourself. Getting information now, or as early as you can, benefits you for the entirety of the transaction and all that.
Mike: So I would say now is the time to start, but that will dictate your timeline of when you actually go into search and try to purchase something in the future.
Saad: I agree. It’s never too early. It’s never too early to start getting your ducks in a row, or even prepare to get your ducks in a row, or to start preparing to get your…
Mike: Just get your ducks. What if you don’t have your ducks?
Saad: Exactly.
Mike: Just know who the ducks
Saad: Yeah, right l because there is a lot involved. It’s not just your agent. It’s not just your lender. It’s not just an attorney. It’s not just an inspector Many times, they’re working together. There’s other components involved who knows what challenges can come up. It is a really important to just start gathering that information I agree and I hear that question all the time like oh like you why should I start? Yeah, now. Yeah, today. How about you?
Mike: You just started by asking me. Like that is the first step in the whole thing.
Saad: And congrats. That’s a big deal. Right? Like pat yourself on the back. That’s huge that you try to go down this path. But now comes like the part of like putting all these pieces together for you because you can’t just read a blog or talk to one person and now you figured everything out. That’s 100 not the case. So you need to get start gathering that information and it takes time to do that And regardless of what your financial situation is, which we’ll talk about in a second. The information gathering super super important, right?
Mike: Right and the overarching thing mainly is going to be financials at the beginning, right? So I know you talked about some things that you can be in control of and some things that you have to like maybe plan further out for. But would you like to delve onto a few of those in the financial umbrella?
Saad: Well, Mike, I would.
Mike: Great
Saad: Let’s talk about the things you do. I think the easiest one is credit. I’m going to take that back. It’s not necessarily easy. It’s the one that, you know, you develop good habits early, right? It’s something you’re not going to have to worry about when you’re off. Basically because it’s going to be so ingrained in how you go about things, it’s not going to be an issue when it comes to getting a loan, right? And again, we’re going to use the lens of somebody who’s getting financing because if you are paying cash, if you have family help you out, all that kind of stuff, this stuff, a lot of this is not gonna apply to you. Like that’s great.
Mike: Like good for you, right?
Saad: Yeah, for you, yes. That’s amazing. a lot of what we’re talking about, largely because majority of people don’t have that benefit. So we’re gonna focus on that lens.
Saad: Without good credit, right? Without good credit, you could still get a loan, but you’d have so many more options if you have good credit.
Mike: Yeah, and rates are gonna be, everything’s gonna be better for you.
Saad: Everything. The down payment assistance programs, how much you can put down, the rate, potential credits, like a lot of different things can be at your disposal if you have good credit. Again, depends on lender and all that kind of stuff. And what that means is pay the bills.
Mike: Yeah. So, the habits that are going to create your credit score.
Mike: But there are some and I just like to pause and say hello to Abdul. What’s up, Wes? And the Punju. What’s up, everybody?
Saad: Hello.
Mike: What’s going on? Welcome. Welcome to the live. It’s good to have you here. So on the credit like…I think the lens I want to look at this through is to not to always remind people that there should be no shame or guilt or something of the past is the past, right? Like you can develop good habits starting now if you don’t have them if you have had them great but analyzing each thing in its reality instead of avoiding some stuff like the credit may be off but that might be a few tweaks or some things that you haven’t paid that you didn’t even know about that need to be closed out and that can be boosted a ton.
Mike: So just analyzing your credit and coming up with a plan to improve it over time, no matter where you’re at right now is the best thing to do.
Saad: And that’s why having discussions, gathering information is so important because there are resources you can tap into to number one, identify what those issues are.
Mike: Right.
Saad: Oh, damn, I did this in a little. Oh, cool. That’s fun. But so that’s number one. Number one, identify it. Then number two is actually figure out what you should do. Right. Because oftentimes, I can guarantee you like you Google something, click on a link and submit information. You’re to start getting spam calls up the line. Like be careful about that. So if you have good people in your corner, they can help you figure out, who you should actually talk to, to help that stuff, to help take care of that stuff. And you made a really good point, like definitely nothing to feel guilty about, right? Because sometimes things just happen in your life, right? And you have a situation where you need to put a lot of money on your credit cards and things like that, not easy to pay off, like this happened. But that’s not the end of the world.
Saad: But it’s important to realize that stays on as a balance and you’re not making your minimum payments and things like that, that can get you in trouble in 18 months when you’re really trying to buy a house. So again, gathering information and starting to put together a plan to tackle that is super important, regardless of the situation.
Mike: I think the avoidance of a lot of people is and something that I think we’re all inclined to think is that you talk to somebody, maybe you don’t know them that well, or something like that. And you automatically feel whether it’s real or not, a sense of pressure from them of like, they’re going to push me to do this or that. Our whole business is based on the reputation and the like time after time practice of being like, there is no pressure. We’re only conveyors of information and guides for this. There is no fee. There is no cost to this. Everybody on a transaction only gets paid if you’ve actually purchased the house. However long that takes and whatever amount of information is needed for that, it comes for free through that. Like there is no charge. So I think people’s avoidance sometimes are like, I’ll start looking next year ,because they think they’re going to be pressured into things or they don’t want to have that in their in their life, but facing the reality head-on is the only way to actually…
Saad: Yeah, and I think if you have that mindset then what you should be doing is…Okay, look you come across those people doing your research and what have you doing a conversation? That you feel that to get that feeling from them then move on to find those people who don’t make you feel that way. Because those are the people that are like They’re going to go to bat for you and do everything they can to make it an amazing experience, number one. But number two, get you to that finish line, right? And really listen to you along the way. That’s not easy to find.
Mike: You are correct.
Saad: Right? It’s not easy to find. But if you have that mindset, start now to find that team that’s going to be in your corner. It takes some time unless, obviously, you’re working with us… But it does take some time generally to figure that out, because every state has its nuances, right? Every, maybe even certain towns have their nuances. So again, do your due diligence, start sooner rather than later, all that kind of stuff.
Saad: I have my thoughts on income and assets, which are the two other…so taking a step back. Three main pillars of getting financing are credit, income, and assets. Credit is the one that you have the most control over. Assets is number two, which I’ll get at in a second, in my opinion. But what are your thoughts on those two, income and assets? What can you be doing, should you be doing, any kind of general tidbits for anybody that’s listening?
Mike: Income and assets. think, well, once again, until you talk to somebody, I would get the plan in place then for avoiding unnecessary purchases. If you do want to buy a home, that goes to your number one slot of importance of things. Not the new grill or a new car or something like that. That should be the main focal point. If there’s other money to do that, by all means, that’s great. But I would lock that down first. I think like an agent and the lender hand in hand right at the beginning, because I know Hunter, Mike, all the lenders that we consistently work with are going to analyze your income and assets, and basically tell you what is the affordability and give you guidance as to if you tweak a few things, here’s how you can be better off.
Mike: The lender is honestly the purveyor of ah the information that I would trust.
Saad: I think you hit uh it on the head when you mentioned earlier, like don’t spend on, know, if you don’t need something and you’re planning on, if you have a timeline for when you want to buy something, you know, what that, what you’re talking about is a budget.
Mike: Oh, am I? Is that what that is? Shit, I didn’t even.
Saad: You’re talking about doing your own kind of mini financial plan, right? To make sure that you’re doing the right things. Again, habits. Getting into those good habits of like putting away a few hundred bucks, investing it properly, using the right accounts, all this kind of stuff. A lot of that, like look, can a financial advisor help you? Sure, yes, right? And can an accountant help you? Yes, they can help you to an extent. And especially together, they can help you a lot, right? But at the end of the day, it’s on you.
Mike: Yeah.
Saad: Right? The budget piece is on you. Nobody knows your budget like you do. So you need to put that budget together, figure out how much you need to set aside, where you need to invest it, all that kind of stuff. Again, that’s where a financial advisor comes in and things like that. That’s why I think, I personally feel, income does not matter nearly as much as assets and credit. Income, there are people who are making $50,000 a year who very quickly, just because they have a budget and have control over their expenses, can get to a point where they’re going to put a 10%, 15%, 20% down payment on the home that they’re looking for in 18 months. But there are people who have expenses out of their control, who make $250,000, $300,000 a year. It’s not so much about how much money you; income matters the least. What matters much more is those habits, and that’s where credit and assets matter much more. So again, part of your information gathering should be gathering your own information. What are your expenses? How much money is coming in? How much money is going out? Create, essentially. a balance sheet for yourself, a budget, obviously, for yourself, to put it simply and make sure there’s some money being set aside to help you achieve this. Yeah.
Mike: And that also can seem like an amorphous thing until you get a target amount from it. Because the thing on this is like people will go online and run like a loan creator or something like that.
Saad: calculator.
Mike: Yeah, loan calculator. And those numbers can be egregiously off. There could be different programs for whatever your situation where you need to know the amount of money that you need to bring, how much you are going to have to spend in cash to get the property that you want? And you can only know that through the program, the lending programs that are available to you. And you might not know a lot about those. So, the budgeting is key, but finding a target amount early on is something that you need to know. And whether that’s two years in advance or you can do it right now, you might as well get an understanding at the moment.
Saad: I get an understanding of like, you know, hey, is it absolutely crucial that you have, that you’re gonna have to pay or absolutely unavoidable that you’re gonna have to pay PMI, right? If you’re putting less than 20% down. Do you have any down payment assistance program at least available right now? Realize things can change in 18 months, things can change in two years, even in a year, right? In fact, they probably will change. But just knowing what is potentially at your disposal can be really helpful and save you tons of time and stress later on.
Mike: Yeah, because the stress is from the unknown. That’s where all the stress comes from.
Saad: And yeah, like you do some planning that you just go into it when you’re…actually active. Active mean like you’re you’re working towards getting your pre-approval, seeing places like talking criteria with your agent, all that kind of stuff. Even putting in offers like when you get to that point you’re gonna have so much more confidence. Done this plan And that’s what it comes down to do some planning. Again everyone’s situation is different, but for your situation, plan around your credit plan, around building some assets You know, income is income. Like your job is your job. You know, every industry is different. And if want to get jobs to make some more money, great. Good for you. Fantastic. Right. But again, I think it’s much more about what you’re doing with the income you have as opposed to how much that income is.
Mike: Very true.
Saad: Like, you know, you even hear about athletes, right? Athletes who make ungodly amounts of money. Right. And then like, you know, a couple of years after they’re playing, they’re broke. It’s because again, very different situations, but main reason is because, like, you know, they didn’t have that planning and good people around them.
Mike I don’t think it’s a different situation. I think it’s just this extrapolated one, you know, like a lot of money behaves in the way that like your sort of discipline and kind of like emotional intelligence on what to do with that. Like, yes, it might be on a smaller scale, but an athlete going broke versus somebody, you know, not earning that money.
Saad: Good point. Broke is broke. Right? Like, like you can’t pay your bills, you your racked up credit card debt, all that kind of stuff. Again, sometimes life will just like necessitate that, right? And that happens, right? But if you have, if you’re doing the right things in terms of gathering the right, gathering information from the right people, and putting a plan together for yourself, this stuff is totally avoidable. It’s totally avoidable. You just need to be intentional about those things. Again, focus on your credit, focus on savings, and a plan around your savings, and you’re probably gonna be totally fine, right? But those are kind of the pillars, I think, the key pillars. Again, income does matter. Any lender is going to ask you how much money you make, because that’s going to matter. I think that the two things that you have. You’ve heard me say this before, Mike, control what you can control. The majority of life you can’t control a lot of things in life. When it comes to your financial life, two things you really can is your credit and your savings.
Mike: Straight up. I’d like to just say hi to Miguel. What’s up, Miguel? Good to see you. up, Miguel? Opal. What’s up, Opal? Diana. Then Ali, or AliS23. What’s up?
Saad: What’s going on? How’s everyone doing? Welcome. Thank you for joining us, guys.
Saad: Again, we’re covering a topic today that came from one of my friends who had mentioned that, you know, there’s not enough content out there about folks planning to buy. It’s about more about buying than actually the whole process to even get there. That’s why we covered it. And so the reason I bring that up is like, you know, if you have suggestions, if you have anything you’d like us to cover, please share. In fact, what we did was we swapped out that topic for something else we had planned for this week just because it was number one timely beginning of the year and number two, it cool that somebody had reached out about
Mike: Yeah, dude. It was awesome. Yeah. And we’ll take all requests. We’re not beholden to our set list of things.
Saad: No. But one thing we commit to is trying to do this every week.
Mike: Of course.
Saad: That’s why I’m doing this while I’m on vacation.
Mike: Yeah, man. we’re got, see, that’s the beauty of that is that we’re going to be doing them for a while. Like, inevitably, we’re going to be traveling in different spots. I was thinking about this week in Mexico. Last week, I was at home back in Boston. The week before that, I was in Canada. So basically, we’re coming out of North America.
Mike: Yeah, dude. you’re…
Saad: Hey, we’ve been having tons of fun doing this. Again, just to recap what we discussed and Mike, you know, please let me know if I missed anything. But key things focus on planning around savings, and focus on any credit issues, and even if you don’t have credit issues, just maintaining good credit because that’s something that’s not easily fixable. And it’s at least like, you know, a short amount of time. Focus on those two things. And gather information. It’s never too early to start gathering the information you need for your situation.
Mike: yep, and our lenders are going to put if you need credit improvement or need to do a few things, they’re gonna put you on a plan for that. They’re gonna give you those details and when it comes to the target goal of how much money you’re gonna need to purchase a house of X amount, they are gonna tell you that because that’s also based on the loan programs that are available and what the down payments are.
Saad: That’s the key, right? People think, oh, I’m going to talk to a lender. I need to get a pre-approval. My credit’s going to get paid. All that kind of stuff. No, that’s not true. You can just have questions for them and have a relationship with a lender, and that’s very powerful. You’re to have somebody you can reach out to with any questions regarding your home loan. It’s actually really helpful resource. It’s such a super helpful resource to have somebody you trust. Again, that’s why like, you know, there’s gonna be some rapport there, you’re gonna like each other and all that kind of stuff. But somebody you can text or email or call if you need to, to just have a question or two answered as you’re doing this planning for, you know, 6 months, 12 months, 18 months, 24 months down the line, like, a good lender is gonna drop everything to answer your question, because they know that this stuff is gonna be helpful for you and results in a transaction down the line. So, I think that’s super important. People do not get caught up in like, oh, my credit’s gonna take a hit if I talk to a lender. That’s not.
Saad: So, just as a tidbit for folks, you get a pre-approval. You get a pre-approval. Yes, your credit will get hit, but that pre-approval lasts for 90 days and if you get a pre-approval from anybody else, it doesn’t matter. Your credit will still only get hit once. So keep that in mind. It’s not, it should not be like, oh my god.
Mike: ding, ding.
Saad: Yeah, exactly. That’s 100% not true. So I just feel like there’s a weird stigma around the industry. It’s crazy to me. Alas, I think I know we’re over time, this was a fun one. Again, send over recommendations if you guys want us to cover anything. And we’ll be back at it next week. Yeah.
Mike: Shout out Randy. Shout out Abdul. Hello.
Saad: Thank you, everybody, for joining.
Mike: Yes, thank you. We love it. And now, you go put that hat to use, my man.
Saad: I’m going to jump right to the hot tub.
Mike: Yeah.
Saad: Let go.
Mike: You can go live with that, I won’t join. All right?
Saad: Oh, man. Maybe we’ll save that for another time. All right, man, we’ll talk next week.
Mike: All right, bye, Saad.
This Instagram live is transcribed for your easy reading. If you want to catch Storii Time live, every week, follow @saadmun1r and @photolowski on Instagram.