It really hasn’t been that long since I closed on my first home loan so you might think I would draw on that experience to help with the new closing yet somehow the memory of it and how it all works went the way of the dodo…completely and totally extinct. Of course there were a bunch of years of college and beer to block out anything useful. Regardless I learned a few new things along the way.

1) The lender is not your friend. He/she is going to do whatever they can to maximize the money they make. They do not have your best interests at heart. Just ask all the people with ARMs that are resetting now.

2) Most mortgage companies are the same. Rates and costs tend to even out, they are all fairly equally sharkish in their practices.

3) Your loan is probably going to be sold. If mortgages were a pile of dirt (and with all junk going on lately in the mortgage market, some of them really are) the big banks would be giant vacuums sucking up most of them.

4) Its easy to forget the costs of buying a house are not just the purchase price. Closing costs are huge. We had thousands in closing costs including: appraisal, inspections, broker fee, rate lock, underwriting, title search and examination, survey fee, and a bunch of other crap.

5) The rates you see assume great credit. Most people do not have good enough credit to qualify for the absolute top rates…especially as lenders are cracking down on it.

Bonus: Be careful when you “lock in” your rate. With the market turmoil last week the rates went all the way from 6.25% down to 5.75% and back up to 6.7%. We locked in at 6% and were not too thrilled when the lender would not let us relock when the next day rates went down a quarter point. On the upside, we actually got away pretty cleanly since rates went up considerably since then.

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