Who will you trust with all of your personal information and with the largest financial investment of your life? Find out how to steer clear of shady lenders and follow these logical steps to get a firm handle on your financing options.

1. Determine your loan needs and desires.When do you need to close your loan? What aspects are most important and in what relative order? Is a 30-year term most important? Or is the monthly payment? Rate, program, loan amount compared to the home's value/purchase price, secondary financing, your monthly obligations compared to your monthly gross income (DTI=debt-to-income ratio), prepayment penalty, primary residence, investment property, ... There are many factors that determine needs and desires. Please be armed with all this information prior to speaking with someone, so that you can focus on discovering how well the loan agent is listening to you and desiring to help you.
2. Research online to gain understanding of where rates are at the moment and to fill in any personal knowledge gaps. Do your due diligence and prepare yourself. Information online is free and plentiful.
3. Ask those whose financial judgment you respect if they can recommend someone personally.
4. Find five and interview them by telephone by allowing them to ask the questions and answer yours.
5. Check the BBB for each and check each out with their states regulatory agency. They all must have a good record and sufficient length of membership.
6. See three in person and judge them by how attentive they are to your needs. Do not judge them by the "trappings" of success, clothes they wear, car they drive, furniture of their office. The person you choose should be someone you like and that likes you. Someone you will trust with the largest financial investment of your life and with all your personal information; hopefully it is with someone that was recommended to you.
7. Investigate at least two companies, that have no local representation, via the telephone after having researched the company's records with the BBB and their states regulating agency.
8. Choose three to seek written preapproval and let them each know that they are competing. A written preapproval is one that you can obtain having given no documentation to the company and they have not run your credit.
9. Obtain your credit report for free from each credit reporting bureau at least once a year. From this you can see your score which each loan agent needs to determine an approval. If you let one run your credit, many individuals will tell you your score is lower than it is or will show you only the lowest so that you cannot shop on them with accurate information.
10. Demand a Good Faith Estimate and a written guarantee of the non recurring closing costs to come with the written preapproval. Non-recurring closing costs or NRCC's are the fees to your loan. This is where the lenders and loan agents make all their extra money. This is where you need to require from them a written and signed declaration that if the fees go over the amount of the original Good Faith Estimate, then they are liable to cover the difference from their proceeds. Doing this will help you compare "apples to apples."
11. Choose the proposal/loan officer that seems best for your situation. For many of you it will be whomever comes in with the lowest rate and same term. But for those of you that are looking ahead, you will choose the person that you can meet with, whom you have built a mutual relationship, where both stand to lose and gain in the community by how well each manages their relationship.

If you're trying to qualify for a mortgage loan, you undoubtedly know how important it is to have a good credit score. Without one, you'll struggle to get most conventional mortgage lenders to give you any mortgage financing.

Mortgage lenders and banks passed out too many loans to too many consumers with weak credit scores during the housing boom. Since the housing market began its crash in late 2006, a growing number of these bad loans have ended up in default. It's led to an uncomfortably high number of housing foreclosures. Foreclosure information Web site RealtyTrac.com reported that the United States saw 2.8 million foreclosure notices in 2009, an all-time record.
Because of this, mortgage lenders have tightened their lending standards. Today, they want borrowers to have scores of at least 620. Those who have scores under 750 won't manage to qualify for lowest interest rates.
If you have dings in your credit history, such as missed credit card payments, late auto loan payments, or even worse, a past bankruptcy, you'll struggle to obtain a mortgage loan from a conventional bank or lender.
There is an option, though, that doesn't involve you paying sky-high interest rates: loans backed the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development Department's Federal Housing Administration, but even consumers taking out these loans will need good credit scores.
FHA-backed loans come with a huge advantage: You'll only have to come up with a down payment of 3-and-a-half percent of a home's final purchase price to qualify for them. Most traditional lenders require you to come up with down payments of 10 percent to 20 percent. That's a big difference in the amount of money you'll need to put down.
To qualify for this program, you'll need a credit score of at least 580. If you don't have this, you can still get an FHA-backed loan. However, you'll have to put down 10 percent of the home's final purchase price instead of 3-and-a-half percent.
Fortunately, building good credit isn't a complicated matter. You'll have to vow to make all your monthly payments on time and cut down on your credit card debt. If you can do these two things, you'll gradually rebuild your credit. Getting a good credit score, then, is something anyone can do. You'll just have to display the financial maturity and patience to work toward getting good credit scores.