ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews Jennifer McNeil, a mortgage industry professional who’s been in the game for about 20 years.
Spending much of her career as a senior mortgage broker and senior underwriting manager — most recently working in financial technology as a senior technical writer and business execution consultant for several years — McNeil knows more than a thing or two about closing on properties and, most importantly, what one’s next steps should be.
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When asked for tips to help potential homebuyers score their first property, McNeil explained that such plans must consider where you’ll be and what you may want to do several years down the road, adding that you’ll need your own place to live regardless.
“If you are someone who doesn’t mind giving a little bit of time for interest rates to decrease and you may be soon becoming an empty nester, you may not want to be in such a sizable home because in three to four years you may be exiting the property anyway. Then you may have someone who wishes to buy, but to do it for a short amount of time and then turn it into an investment property,” she said. “Someone like myself, I intended to move across the country after becoming an empty nester, so just on that merit alone, that question can be answered in a multitude of ways.”
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McNeil stressed the importance of being honest and forthcoming with your loan officer to ensure a smooth underwriting process once the ball gets rolling. Given that her job commonly involves checking in frequently with clients to ensure said ball keeps rolling, one suggestion she made was to maintain an adequate dialogue to improve everyone’s understanding.
“I promise you, everything is going to be validated in that application, we’re going to find out those things that you do and do not disclose. It’s just in your best interest to reveal those things up front so that we can build a strategy from the very point of application to help you navigate through the process, because your loan officer has the ability to write what is called ‘letters of explanation’ to explain what happened. For instance, we’re just coming off COVID and for many people they were out of work for more than six months. Being out of employment for six months raises a red flag in the mortgage industry. However, if you let your loan officer know that that was something that happened to you, then from the very start of the application they can develop a letter of explanation, ‘This person was out of work for six months due to layoffs, COVID, health reasons, had a baby,’ any of those things, and then they can address it right up front,” she said.
Hear the full interview in Season 4, Episode 23 of “Black Men Sundays.”
Black Men Sundays talks about building generational wealth. Check out every episode in the media player below.