Hi, my name is Andy Morean with Brooker Mortgage. I'm the operations manager, and today we're going to talk about first-time homebuyer loans. I love working with all my clients, but probably my favorite clientele are the first-time homebuyers. The reason why is because they're excited; they've never done it before.

It's a monumental thing to own your first home, and it's exciting. It should be a time that's fun, and it should be a time that you're planning for your future with your. Along with the excitement, though, there can be nerves. It can be a very complex process that will start throwing terms around that you may not understand, like PMI and contract dates and debt ratios and reserves and all that stuff that really.

You probably just don't have any experience with. You may question if your credit is good enough or if you can afford a home or how much home you can afford. Those are a lot of very important serious questions that you may have at the beginning of the process. And that's where we step in. Brooker Mortgage is well-teamed and staffed with a team that truly wants the client to understand the process from start to.

There is a lot to know, and that's why we take an educational approach. We really aren't there to be your salesperson as much as we are to be your educator. There, there are a lot of things to know, and we will help you all the way through the process. Without mentioning specific names, there are a lot of lenders that will advertise how quick they are.

Where you hit a few buttons or make a five-minute phone call and you're ready to go. We have the philosophy that it's a little bit more than that. There's a lot to know when you buy a home, and we have the technology to be very quick and efficient as well. But we also have the patience, and I think the really the motivation to be more than just the person that facilitates the transaction and rather to become someone that's actually going to become your mentor in the process, if you will.

To get a little bit more specific, we have programs that are specifically designed for first-time homebuyers. The first one that comes to mind is HomeReady. That is a conventional loan product, and you only are required to have 3% down. There are some income guidelines and some issues that we look at, but that's our job.

The other great thing about the HomeReady program is that they have reduced PMI factors. And the interest rate is subsidized. So what that boils down to is a lower, more affordable payment, which is very important when you're buying your first home so that you don't bite off more than you can chew.

Other programs, if that program doesn't work, that a lot of times first-time homebuyers can benefit from are FHA, VA, and USDA. FHA is a little bit more flexible if someone has lower credit scores or no credit whatsoever. A lot of places will just turn the other way, and I feel that's an underserved portion of the community are people that have had hard times in the past with credit.

So FHA comes in with those types of situations. For our veterans out there, I also love doing veteran loans, but there's a VA product that offers 0% down. There's also a USDA loan, which will be more for rural areas that also offer 0% down, which can be helpful. On all of our loans, gifts are options for clients.

So if a family member or a close family friend is willing to gift the money for the down payment, that is allowable and helps a lot of first-time homebuyers out that maybe haven't quite had time yet to save a large down payment. We also can work with down payment assistance programs as well which is becoming less common.

But we still do those quite a bit. So to summarize what we talked about today, buying your first home can be exciting. But it can also be very stressful. There's a lot to know. There are a lot of people in the transaction involved that do have different roles, and we like to explain how those people all fit in.

We're here to help. We're here to make the process a little bit less complex and really lay out what you should expect at given points in the transaction. We're well staffed with a team that is very motivated to help first time home buyers. They're patient. They love what they do. They want people to be in the right situation, and we have the programs to match that team to get first time home buyers in the right spot.