If you’ve been pre-approved to buy your dream home,
and are waiting for the paperwork to go through, you may be thinking about some
needs and wants to make your new home just right.
You could buy a big-screen TV to go into the family
room. And maybe the kitchen remodeling should be done sooner rather than later.
But with all the money you’ve put into purchasing your home, you may be
strapped for cash.
Your credit is good enough to enable you to buy your
new home, so would it really be a problem to purchase some of your needs and,
OK, a few wants, before you go to closing? Unfortunately, the answer is yes.
Here’s why: Your lender will pull your credit on the
day of closing. And if new credit lines show up on your credit report, your
loan file will have to go back to underwriting to be re-approved.
If you barely qualified for the loan when you signed
the papers, you could have pushed your ratios out of range, and you may not
qualify now.
But can you make your purchases by applying for new
credit after closing? Resist the urge. Credit pulls could potentially
lower your credit scores, and because you may have access to more credit than
you did before you started to look for a new home, that may also have an impact.
So before you buy, talk to your mortgage
professional. That big-screen TV just may not be worth the risk.
