Ask Tara @Trulia

At this point in December, it can start to feel like the New Year – along with all our hopes, dreams, wishes and expectations for it – are barreling down on us. Personally, I’m a rabid Resolution-setter, and I have a pretty strong track record of making New Year’s changes actually happen – and stick.  But what I know after years of using the New Year as a great excuse to set and meet some goals is that it’s very, very helpful to get a head start, ramping-up to new habits, behaviors and target goals achievements starting in December.

If you’re one of the millions who has an eye on 2012 as the year in which you’ll buy a home (first or not), here are five things you can do now to put yourself on the right path:

1.    Check your credit. Take my word for it: there is no bad surprise worse than a bad credit surprise. Okay, maybe there is one thing worse – a credit surprise you receive while you’re in the midst of trying to buy a home!

Recent studies have revealed that a record high number of real estate transactions are falling out of escrow, and that credit “issues” are a leading cause of these dead deals. Your best chance at catching and correcting score-lowering errors and other derogatory items before they destroy your personal American Dream is to start checking and correcting while you still have time on your side.

2.    Do your research.  The more rapidly the real estate market changes, the more it behooves smart buyers to study up before they jump in.  And now’s the time – you can start doing online and in-person research into topics ranging from:

·    Target states, cities and neighborhoods. Whether you’re relocating or simply trying to narrow down the local districts to focus on during your 2012 house hunt, December is a great time to start your online research into decision-driving factors like tax rates, school districts, neighborhood character and even prices in various areas. Resident ratings and reviews sites like Trulia and NabeWise can help you make the neighborhood-lifestyle match.

Once you narrow things down and start speaking to local agents, ask them to brief you on the local market dynamics, including how long homes typically stay on the market and whether they generally go for more or less than the asking price, so you can be smart about how you search. (And yes, Virginia, there are areas where homes sell for more than asking, even as we speak!)

·    Real estate and mortgage pros. If you don’t already have your pros picked out, now is the time to get on the horn or drop an email or Facebook message to your circle of contacts, asking them for a referral to a broker or agent they love.  Follow up by: checking whether these pros are active in answering questions on Trulia Voices, searching for their name and seeing what sort of feedback on them you can cull from the web, then giving them a ring and launching a conversation about whether you and they might be a good partnership.

·    Short sales and REOs. Distressed property sales are not for the unwary. If you want to target upside down or foreclosed homes, or are planning to house hunt in an area where many of the listings are described as short sales or foreclosures, get educated about what you can expect from a distressed property purchase transaction before you get your heart set on a short sale.

·    What you get for the money. Online house hunting is a powerful tool – especially when it’s cold and wet! But there comes a point in your house hunt where you’ve got to just get out into the actual physical homes you’re seeing online in order to get a strong, accurate sense of what home features, aesthetics and location characteristics correlate with what price points.

·    Mortgage musts. You can read a bunch of articles about mortgages and get yourself pretty far down the path toward qualifying for a home loan, but you can only get a personalized action plan for a smooth road ‘home’ by talking with a local mortgage broker and having them assess your basic financials.  They might say you need to move funds around, pay a bill down or off or produce some sort of documentation from your employer.  And the time to start all that is now.

3.    Fluff up your cash cushion. So, you’ve saved up your 3.5 percent down payment. Perhaps you saved a little extra for closing costs.  Or maybe you’re even one of those uber-aggressive 20-percent-down-ers.  No matter how much you’ve saved, you’ll find that you could use more once you activate your home buying action plan. Mark my words – after closing, you’ll crave extra cash to do some repairs, upgrade a couple of things, buy appliances or even just to hold onto in order to minimize your anxiety about depleting your savings! 

So, if homebuying is on your personal 2012 action plan, don’t go hog wild on holiday gifts. Instead, wait until next year and give yourself the gift of a home.

4.    Shed some stuff.  Sell it. Donate it. Give it to relatives who’ve always coveted it.  Just get rid of it. If you do it before year’s end, you can kill three birds with one stone: (a) getting some cold hard cash to go toward your savings, (b) getting some tax receipts so you can deduct the value of your donations in January, (c) minimizing money spent on holiday gifts for loved ones and these two bonus birds – clearing the mental clutter that physical clutter creates and prepping for your move in advance.

5.    Sit very, very still.  Sometimes, the best way to further our goals is to stop tripping ourselves up.  In that vein, commit right now to refrain from making any major financial moves until you buy your home.  Don’t quit your job to start that personal chef business (yet), don’t pull a bunch of cash out of your savings account (without getting clearance form your mortgage pro first), and don’t start buying cars and boats on credit – even if you do love the idea of putting the red bow on the car you give your wife, like in the commercials.

I assure you, the bow you’ll be able to put on that house or condo will be much bigger, redder and more tax-advantaged!

P.S. - You should follow Trulia and Tara on Facebook!

Once upon a home, buying a home was as simple as saving some dough, spending a couple of weekends visiting Open Houses and writing up a contract. The time frame from house hunt to move-in was a couple of months, max. These days, super-tight mortgage guidelines, market concerns, distressed sales and appraisal dramas complicate and prolong both buying and selling.  

If you need to pull both buying and selling off at the same time, it can seem like you're signing up for these complications, squared. On top of that, the very real prospect of spending some time homeless takes the stress of home buying and selling to an entirely new dimension.

Fortunately, getting yourself educated about what to expect on today's market and knowing all your options empowers you to obliterate panic with a strategic approach, an amazing logistics plan (and backup plan) and comprehensive preparedness for all possible outcomes.  In that vein, here are four need-to-knows for those who want or need to sell their current home and buy a new one, at the same time.

1. Meet with a local agent who actively sells homes in your neighborhood, far in advance of listing or house hunting.  You need them to brief you on items like how long you should expect your home to take to sell on today's market, what (if anything) you can do to move it faster, and whether listing after doing some improvements to your home, at a different time of year or at a different price point than you had planned can realistically be expected to make an impact on your time frame. 

You also need their professional opinion as to what price you can expect to get for your home. This will impact whether you need to consider a short sale (if your home's value is less than you owe on it, for example) which, in turn may affect your ability to qualify for a home loan in the short-term. (Short sales often make it difficult to qualify for a new home loan for a couple of years.)  If you need to buy in the near-term, but your home is unlikely to sell except as a short sale, you'll need to discuss the legalities and logistics with your mortgage pro, attorney and/or a CPA, as well.  

Actually, the information about how long your home will take to sell, how much you can expect to sell it for and whether you're expecting to have to unload it at a short sale is all information you'll need to provide to your mortgage pro, so definitely collect it as early as possible in the process. A year before you need to move is not too soon to have your first meet up with your agent.

2.  Meet with your mortgage broker before your start looking for homes or put your own home on the market. Of course, this is something you would have done eventually in preparation for your purchase, but it's essential that you have them walk with you through both your sell and your plans to buy, before you do either. 

Why?

Well, a good local mortgage broker can work with you and your agent to help you:

• do the math on what you'll net from your home sale;
• help you know how much you (a) can qualify to buy, and (b) will need to come up with for your purchase;
• understand whether the sale will impact your credit at all all and by how much, if so; and 
• time your sale vis-a-vis your purchase.

There are dozens of ways the sequence might need to play out, to be successful at both buying and selling, and you'll need your mortgage pro to be a partner in the process of determining how to order things - before you actually do anything.  For example, you might be under the impression that you can't buy before you sell, because you can't qualify for both, when in fact your mortgage pro could suggest a solution like a low- or no-cost refi first, to bring your payment down so you can qualify to buy before you sell. Or maybe you ARE in a situation where you can't qualify to carry two loans, so you need to sell first and use your own cash to make up the difference between what you owe on your home and what it sells for to avoid a short sale so you can still qualify to buy your next property. 

In any event, you won't know what exactly your capabilities are, from a mortgage and timing perspective, until you hear it from the source.  So, get that meeting on the calendar, too, as early as possible.

3.  Know your options for staying in after closing - or moving in early.  Many homeowners try to buy and sell at precisely the simultaneous moment, with very little overlap, because they don't want to throw money away on rentals.  The reality of today's market is that very, very few sales close precisely when they are expected to, mostly for reasons entirely out of the control of either party.  The seller's bank takes months longer than expected to allow a short sale to close, or the buyer's bank takes eons to sign off on the appraised value of the home.  In any event, if you are selling your home, before your purchase will be complete, know that it's okay to ask for a "rent-back" where you can stay in the property for as long as a month or more after the sale closes by agreement with the buyer to pay them rent on the property in the amount of their mortgage payment, taxes and insurance for the time you remain in the home. 

On the other hand, if you are buying after your sale closes, some sellers will allow you to move in before closing on a similar arrangement - essentially a lease or early move-in arrangement.  They may ask you to sign a document waiving their liability for your belongings and anything else that goes wrong while you're there, before closing - you'll have to negotiate and decide what works for all involved.  Before you start to freak out at the thought that your 'buy' won't close when you need it to, know that this option might be available, and talk with your home's seller to see if they'll consider it. 

4.  Plan for gaps - and for overlaps. There is very little in this world we can be sure of, except the high probability of your escrow closing late.  Having a backup plan in place just in case you close one or both transactions off-schedule is essential to avoiding the surprise-induced panic attacks so frequently suffered by those intrepid housing consumers who try to buy and sell homes at the same time. And, frankly, sometimes the best defense against these surprises is simply to plan for gaps and/or overlaps.

So, if you want or need to buy before you sell, build a cash cushion that can cover double payments for a couple of a months - and just plan on that. If that's not in the budget, or if you'd like to try out your new neighborhood or town before you buy, close your home's sale, then plan on renting a place during your house hunt - if you just need a place for a month or two, you might want to consider a suite hotel or a short-term, vacation-style rental like those you can find on sites like Airbnb.

P.S. - You should follow Trulia and Tara on Facebook!

In most parts of the country, the housing market is good (or great!) for buyers right 

now - interest rates are bizarrely low, lots of inventory means lots to choose from, and the cost of renting has increased in a lot of markets. But just because the market’s good doesn’t mean it’s the right time for everyone to buy. The decision whether to buy a home is a very personal one; you need to carefully examine your own situation to determine whether it’s right for you.

So, what are the questions you need to answer in deciding whether you’re ready to buy? Here are some of the big ones:

1. Do I have enough money for a down payment?
And how much, exactly, is “enough?”  Today’s minimum down payment requirements range from 3.5 percent on an FHA loan to 10 or even 20 percent for conventional loans. That means coming up with anywhere from $7,000 to $40,000 on a typical $200,000 house. While there are still programs that can give you a down payment assist (see last week’s post, 5 Insider Secrets for Coming Up With Cash for Down Payment), much of the heavy lifting here will need to come from you - in the form of saving up your hard earned cash. And keep in mind there are also closing costs you’ll probably have to pay in cash, which can run as high as 3-4% of your total purchase price.

Talk with a real estate pro and a mortgage broker in your areas to start wrapping your head around how much “cash to close” (i.e., down payment + closing costs) will run, approximately, on a local property that would meet your needs. Can your savings cover this? If not, where will you get the money - what’s your plan for coming up with it?   Putting down as much as you can a) makes you more attractive to lenders, so you might qualify you for better loan terms and b) gives you additional purchasing power, either decreasing your monthly mortgage payment or increasing your purchase price limit for a home.

2. Can I handle the not-so-glamorous aspects of homeownership?
If you can’t even fathom the prospect of having a home maintenance crisis without having a landlord to call to fix it, you might want to reconsider homeownership - or at the very least, buy a lower maintenance condo or townhome in great condition, and make sure you get a home warranty!  As a home owner, after all, you essentially are your own landlord. Pipe bursts in the middle of the night? Guess who’ll be up fixing it or calling (and paying) the plumber? (Hint: you.)

There are also some less-than-glamorous bills you’ll have to deal with in your new role as a homeowner that you never laid eyes on as a renter: property taxes and hazard insurance, to name two. When you go from renter to owner, you also need to account for the cost of appliances and maintaining the property’s roof, windows, and landscaping, among other things.

3. How long do I intend to stay in the house?
If you think you might move out of the area next year, then you really shouldn’t be thinking about buying a house (unless of course, you want to play landlord and rent it out after you leave - a prospect which requires its own risk/rewards analysis). For your home purchase to pencil out as a good deal, financially, you’ll shouldn’t buy unless you’re comfortable staying in the house at least 5-7 years - even longer, if you’re buying a home in a foreclosure hot spot or an area with a sluggish job market.. This gives you some time to build up equity and make up for the costs of buying, selling and moving.

4. Are my job and finances stable?
Maybe you just went through a major career change and are in the process of working your way back up from the top. Or maybe you work in a field that has been hit really hard by layoffs and cutbacks. The worst case scenario is to find yourself in a spot with mortgage payment you have no way to make, when you could have avoided that by seeing the writing on the wall. If you feel like there’s a real chance you could lose your job or income tomorrow, you may want to hold off on buying a house - that has the added bonus of giving you the geographic freedom to move, if needed, to get a new job.

Is there really such a thing as 100 percent job security in today’s economy? Probably not. But the best practice is to be confident that your finances could handle a temporary loss of income and still make your mortgage payments, before you buy. One way to do this is to have enough money in the bank to cover 4-6 months’ worth of living expenses, calculating them to include your mortgage payment - before you deem yourself ready to buy. That way, even if you lose your job with no warning at all, you’ll at least have a reasonable window of time to find a new one without digging yourself into a hole - or worse, losing your home altogether.

5. What are my real reasons for buying?
Buying a home is a long-term commitment that will have massive impacts on your lifestyle, your family and your finances. In other words, don’t do it unless you’re really sure you want to and are ready for the lifestyle change - don’t let someone else talk you into it. Worthy reasons renters with homeowning readiness give for their decision to buy include some or all of the following:

• You want to build equity instead of paying a landlord. Fact is, if you get a fixed rate mortgage and make the payments for the full term of the loan, you'll eventually pay it off. That's not possible when you're renting.
• You want a place to call your own, where you can paint a wall purple, add a pottery spinning studio or build your dogs an obstacle course (oops - that's my reason for homeownership!), because it's your prerogative.
• You want the tax advantages of homeownership.
• You want a stable place you and your family can live for as long as you'd like.

Ask yourself these questions, and be honest with your answers. If you really want to buy, but your answers to these questions today don’t weigh in that direction, it doesn’t mean you’ll never own a home. It’s usually just a matter of strategically timing your purchase out a year or two when your savings, your career and your lifestyle are in alignment with the implications of ownership - consider working closely with a real estate broker and a mortgage professional to get an action plan in place and start working that plan.

P.S. - You should follow Trulia and Tara on Facebook!

In a recent study, 19 percent of American consumers who reported finding an error in their credit reports opted not to dispute the error, even when they were offered $5 to file the dispute!  Why not?  Well, some said they thought the error was too minor to impact their score, while others said the dispute process seemed too difficult to tackle.

The fact is, when you’re trying to qualify for a home loan, some of the items on your credit report that can pose a threat to your home finance plans might surprise you. Here are 5 surprising credit report entries you absolutely must fix, especially when you are in the process of buying or refinancing a home.

1.     Account balances you recently paid down or off. If you’ve just finished paying a bill down or off, you might not dispute the elevated balance that remains on your credit report because it’s not actually an error, per se.  But the whole point of paying the balance down was to bring down your credit utilization ratio, which is a heavily weighted factor in your overall credit score.  

Correcting the actual balances of your outstanding bills downward to account for your recent pay-down efforts poses such a large potential improvement impact for your credit score that it might even be worth paying your mortgage professional the $30 to $50 it will cost for them to initiate a Rapid Rescore, which can update your reports to reflect your slimmed-down balances in about 72 hours, compared with the 30 to 60 days you’d expect to wait to see results from a traditional dispute or update.

2.     Incorrect former addresses. Of the 19 percent of consumers who spotted an error on their report in the study, nearly 40 percent of those errors were in what the credit bureaus call “header data," things like the consumer's previous street address. Many elected not to dispute these sorts of line items because the error doesn't seem like it would impact their credit score.  While an inaccurate address might not have much to do with your score, it can still wave a red flag, signaling issues that can foul-up your mortgage application.

A misspelling in an otherwise correct street name should not cause you grave concern.  But if the previous addresses listed are in the wrong city or state, or otherwise come out of nowhere, they might signal that someone has used your name and/or social security number to obtain credit at a different address.  Credit card fraud and identity theft are difficult to unravel when you’re not seeking credit; they are much more complicated to resolve when the credit stakes are high and the underwriter as picky as they are in the course of applying for a mortgage.   

Also, current and previous addresses that conflict with where you’ve told the lender you live(d) can raise suspicion that you might be buying a second or rental home, rather than the owner-occupied home you say you’re trying to buy; that can provoke a lender to demand that you ante up more down payment dough, make you jump through greater hoops to prove your true address or even stop you from qualifying for the loan altogether.

3.     Bills that were never yours in the first place. As with completely bizarre former addresses, accounts listed on your credit report that you never opened in the first place can be a red flag that tips you to the fact that someone else might have stolen your identity and opened a credit card or account in your name.  If you find one of these items on one credit bureau report, but it’s currently closed or has a zero balance, you might be tempted to let it slide, thinking it can’t move the needle on your credit score.  In reality, though, if someone is using your identity to obtain credit and you fail to dispute that the bills belong to you, they might continue to use it, which can cause you real problems.  Of course, if the bills weren’t paid on time or have been placed in collection, disputing the accounts’ presence on your credit report is a must.  

If they were paid on time every time, though, the analysis might be different.  Unfortunately, instituting a fraud-based credit freeze or fraud alert on your credit reports at the same time as you’re applying for a mortgage can complicate your own loan qualification process significantly.  If you find yourself in this situation, carefully scrutinize the rest of your report and the credit reports you receive from the other bureaus to detect whether other fraudulent accounts exist, then consult with your mortgage professional on exactly when and how you should go about disputing the accounts which weren’t actually yours.

4.     Limits listed as lower than they really are. As with closed accounts that were never yours in the first place, accounts that are listed on your credit report as having limits that are lower than they really are might seem like a battle not worth fighting.  But the fact is that only two inputs go into the credit utilization ratio that comprises about 30 percent of your FICO score: how much credit you have available, and how much credit you have used.  So, if you have account balances that show up on your credit reports as lower than they actually are (i.e., that you have less credit available to use), that inaccuracy can skew your credit score and screw up your mortgage qualifying efforts. Big time.

5.    Derogatory items that should have aged off. Very few of us are perfect, and you might have worked hard to pay your bills on time in an effort to overcome a credit ding from back in the days.  Although the impact a derogatory item has on your credit score wanes over time, it’s still your right (and your responsibility) to make sure negative items disappear from your credit report when they are supposed to – that’s 7 years for a late payment, 10 years for a bankruptcy.  If you are still seeing credit dings on your report after more than the relevant time frame has elapsed, dispute them and claim the rehabbed credit (and score) you’ve since earned.

It’s not very common that credit report disputes cause dramatic changes in credit score, but again, many borrowers aren’t disputing these sorts of items they don’t realize could make a difference in their homebuying or refinancing prospect.  

Beyond that, if you’re close to a credit tier cutoff, like 620-640 or 740-760, depending on your loan type, even a few points’ difference can be the difference in qualifying for a home or not, or paying a higher mortgage interest rate for the life of your loan.  For these reasons, it behooves every potential borrower to be proactive in spotting and correcting these 5 must-dispute errors.

P.S. - You should follow Trulia and Tara on Facebook!

 

 

There are lots of purchases that are highly prone to impulse buying: shoes on sale, puppies at the pound, and carrot cupcakes with cream cheese buttercream frosting come instantly to mind. (But that's just me.)

But houses?  Not so much. Savvy, regret-free homebuying can take weeks or months of financial and lifestyle research and planning.  If you want 2011 to be the year you become a homeowner, here are 5 things you should be doing, as we speak.

1.  Minimize your holiday spending and save your cash. Instead of using the holiday sales to acquire a new winter wardrobe of cashmere sweaters, hold the discretionary spending down so you can give yourself the gift of homeownership!  If you are serious about buying a home next year, don't run up additional credit card debt on gifts this year. Instead, make homemade cards or write holiday letters this year for everyone except the kiddos.  And even for the kids, consider scaling back on the stuff, spending more of your time with them than your money, and getting started now saving toward your home purchase. (I don't think too many folks would argue that a less materialistic holiday season would hurt anyone, at any age.) 

Kickstart your 2011 homebuying resolution by starting a "Home" savings account at an high-interest, online bank (the discipline-boosting goal is a bank that isn't super easy to transfer funds out of when you run low on cash), and set up an automatic deposit into it every payday. To get specific about your savings goal, if you're cash-flush, obviously a 20% down payment will get you top notch interest rates and provide you with the maximum ability to manage your monthly payments. If you're going to be more of a bootstrapping buyer, an FHA loan might be right up your alley - they offer a down payment of 3.5% of the purchase price. 

All buyers should plan to have at least 3 percent of the purchase price saved up for closing costs, even if you want the seller to chip in.  The lower-priced the home you want to buy, the more percentage points you should be willing to chip in for closing costs.  It's easy for closing costs on an $150,000 FHA loan to run as high as $4,000 or more, considering transfer taxes, inspections, appraisals and mortgage insurance fees. So, even the scrappiest buyer should have a savings target somewhere around 6.5% of their target home's price.  To buy a $200,000 home, for example, that would mean a savings target of $13,000.

Local real estate and mortgage pros can help you clarify realistic "cash to close" expectations and savings targets for your area - ask them, on Trulia Voices.

2.  Research financing, areas homes, prices, agents and online. Smart homebuying takes a lot of research and knowledge-gathering.  Since most buyers find it much harder to qualify for a mortgage than it is to find a home you'd love to live in, start with studying up on home financing and what it will take for you to get a home loan (note: FHA loans are preferred by the average homebuyer on today's market who has less than a 10% down payment, so start your research there). 

If you're considering relocating next year, now's the time to start narrowing down states, cities and even neighborhoods that may or may not work for you. Take into account the job market, housing and other costs of living, and income and property tax rates, as well as the critical lifestyle inputs that vary from state-to-state, like weather and whether the place is a personality fit for you and the life you want to live, be it urban sophisticate or outdoors adventurer. 

Also, start to develop a feel for home prices in a what-you-get-for-your-money type way, and start narrowing down the home styles and even neighborhoods that might fit your aesthetic preferences and lifestyle.  If you're one of those rare buyers-to-be who is not already obsessively house hunting, hop on Trulia and start regularly checking out homes and neighborhoods, making sure to take advantage of the neighborhood ratings and reviews feature, which empowers you to surface what other folks think and say about an area. 

3.  Rehab your credit, if you need to.  Go to AnnualCreditReport.com and check out your credit reports - from all 3 bureaus - for free. (Note - these will not give you your credit score for free - that costs extra, but it will give you the actual detailed credit reports.)  Audit them for errors and do the work of disputing inaccuracies to have them corrected. Pay particular attention to: accounts that are not yours/you never opened, derogatory information that should have "aged off" your report by now (i.e., 7 years for late payments, 10 for bankruptcies) and balances or credit limits that are inaccurate (i.e., your credit card balance is listed at $2500, but you actually only owe $250.)  These are the errors most likely to foul up your financing, so follow the instructions each bureau provides to correct them, stat. While you're at it, don't close any accounts, even if you are able to pay some down or off - actually, check out these tips for getting the bank to give you the best possible home loan, without unintentionally making your score worse!

4.  Run your numbers. In the past, some overextended homeowners complained that they felt pushed into a mortgage they couldn't afford. Pundits blamed that on the real estate and mortgage industry, but I have witnessed firsthand many a homebuyer push themselves or their spouses into buying too expensive of a home. Eliminate this issue entirely by doing this - run your own numbers, before you ever even talk to a salesperson or start looking at homes beyond your means. (I assure you, once you see the million dollar home you think you can afford, the $250,000 home you can actually afford will be underwhelming.)

Get your monthly finances in order, and get a clear read on how much your monthly bills are - outside of housing. Decide how much you can afford to spend every month for housing, when you buy your home.  Get clear on exactly how much cash you plan to have at hand to put into your transaction up front.  When, in the next step, you begin working with a mortgage broker, you'll want to share these numbers with them, early on in your conversation, to empower them to tell you what home price you can afford - not based on their rubrics, but based on what you say you want to spend every month and what you want to put down.

5.  Talk to a real estate and mortgage broker (1 of each). Trulia is a great place to find an engaged, communicative, tech-savvy real estate broker or agent in your area.  You can use our Find a Pro directory or simply start participating in the Trulia Voices Community, asking your questions and tagging them for the town where you plan to buy a home, and paying attention to the agents who give timely, thorough responses to your questions, and communicate in a language you understand. 

Drop one (or a few) an email, letting them know you'd like to work on putting an action plan together for buying a home next year, and would like to talk with them about what action steps need to go on the list. Ask them to brief you on the timeline of a transaction in your local market, and to point out for you things like when along the process you'll need to bring money in, when you'll need to miss work and come into their office or the closing office, whether they offer conveniences like digital document signing, and generally the local standard practices about which buyers you'll need to know.  Depending on your target home purchase timeline, they might even want you to take a spin with them and look at a few properties to reality-check your expectations or narrow down a broad wish list. 

In addition to chatting with them about timing your purchase vis-à-vis your other life events and plans for the year, make sure to ask for referrals to a local, trustworthy mortgage broker or two - preferably one that has worked with them and closed a number of transactions with their clients.  (In fact, many busy real estate pros will want you to talk with their trusty mortgage partner before they get too involved in your planning process.  You may think you only need a month to get ready to buy, but once the mortgage folks weigh in, it might turn out that you actually need a few.)  When you do get in touch with the mortgage maven, if you're serious about buying, you will want them to actually pull your credit report, check the actual FICO scores that come up on their system and give you their professional recommendations for what final tweaks you can do to your debts to get your credit score where it needs to be.