How I work
Purchasing or refinancing a home is the most expensive transaction most people ever make. Choosing the lender is usually the fastest decision they make. I think that's backwards.
My job is to make you a successful homeowner, not to close a loan
Those aren't the same thing. Plenty of people close loans and end up house-poor, over-leveraged, or stuck in the wrong product because nobody asked them the right questions. The loan is the easy part. The decisions around it are what determine whether the house makes your life better or harder for the next ten years.
A house is a financial tool
It's the largest asset most people will ever own and the largest debt they'll ever carry, and it sits inside the rest of your financial life: your savings rate, your retirement plan, your kids' tuition, your business. I treat the mortgage as one piece of a long-term wealth-building plan, not as a transaction that ends at the closing table. If you work with a financial advisor, I'll work with them. If you don't, I'll ask the questions an advisor would.
Affordability first, qualification second
A lender can tell you what you qualify for in about ten minutes. That number is almost always higher than what you should spend. What you can afford depends on your actual monthly life: what you save, what you spend, what's coming (a baby, a career change, a parent moving in), and what you want your weekends to look like. We start there, with a budget, and work toward a payment you can live with comfortably. Then we find the house, not the other way around.
Buy a home you can afford to enjoy
I've seen too many buyers stretch to the maximum, close, and then sit on the floor of an empty living room for two years because there's nothing left for furniture, travel, or a margin for the unexpected. That's not a win. The right purchase leaves room for the rest of your life.
Strategy, not a default
The 15-year fixed because your uncle said so. Twenty percent down because that's "what you're supposed to do." Paying points because the rate looked lower. None of those are wrong, but none of them are automatically right either. Every structure (down payment, term, rate versus points, buydowns, which program, when to lock, whether to buy at all right now) has a cost and a benefit, and the best answer depends on your numbers and your plans. I'll show you the options side by side and tell you what I'd do in your shoes. The choice stays yours.
I'll ask the hard questions
If the numbers say a purchase will leave you stretched, I'll say so. If a plan depends on a bonus that isn't guaranteed or a rental that may not rent, I'll ask about it before an underwriter does. The questions aren't always comfortable, but they're a lot more comfortable now than eighteen months after closing.
Sometimes the answer is "not yet," and then we make a plan
Some clients come to me ready. Some aren't, and I tell them. Credit that needs six months of work, a down payment that needs another year, a job change that should settle first. When that's the case, you leave with a specific plan and a date, and we stay in touch until you're ready. I'm paid when a loan closes, like every loan officer. I'd still rather close the right loan a year from now than the wrong one next month.
How this actually happens
All of the above runs through the Mortgage Masterclass, three sessions every client goes through: your goals and budget first, the mechanics of your loan second, and your Loan Estimate line by line third. No fee, no obligation.
Once a client, always a client
After closing you get a monthly update on your home's value and equity, a target refinance rate that I watch for you so you don't have to, an annual review of how the mortgage fits the rest of your finances, and an open line for questions, forever. Before a refinance, a HELOC, an investment property, or a conversation with your advisor about the house, call me first.
Want to talk it through?
Thirty minutes on video. No application, no obligation, and no cost, now or later.