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Thank you for reaching out to Vellum Mortgage. We are thrilled to connect with you and learn more about your exciting journey toward homeownership. At The Downs Group, we believe education is the key to empowering our clients to make informed decisions and achieve their goals confidently. To help you get started, we have prepared…

In real estate, the more competitive the situation, the more people think about waiving contingencies, settling faster, and trying to be better than all the other offers. One of the biggest is waiving the appraisal contingency. It adds risk, but in this video, we tell you everything you should consider before you do that yourself.…

Getting your credit score is one of the most frustrating things about getting a mortgage. Credit scores play a very instrumental role in the actual rate you get. The lower your score, the higher your interest rate, and the higher your cost of private mortgage insurance. Sometimes, it can even get in the way of…

This question starts in one of the following two ways.  “John, I have a 401(k). What do you think about borrowing those funds to buy my house?” Or, “John, I have a 401(k), but I don’t even want to talk about borrowing from it. It’s not an option. The money is staying there.” Before you…

In a recent article, we discussed how you do not need to put 20% down to buy a home. But when I tell people that, the very next thing they say is, “but I don’t want to pay PMI.” What is Private Mortgage Insurance, better known as PMI? A few decades ago, if you wanted…

I work with many first-time home buyers, and over the years, I have seen them make many mistakes. Of course, we try to do everything we can to prevent them from making a regretful decision. Sometimes I can. Well, sometimes they will just do what they are going to do. But the two things I…

When buying a house, the first thing you do is get pre-approved. This video explains how lenders navigate the approval process with buyers and, more importantly, the pitfalls to look out for. Lenders use three common approaches when counseling buyers through the approval process. The first is a prequalification, which is nothing more than a…

People often ask me why some offers get accepted, and others don’t.  They continue thinking that someone just offered to pay more than they did.  The reality is, winning can be about so much more than just the price! Winning is all about how the seller sees things.  They’re trying to decide between who is going…

Down payments are one of the most important topics to discuss when buying a home. How much should you save for a down payment on a house? It’s a great question, and I think the best way to answer this is just by telling a story. One evening I was at a first-time home buyer…

Let’s talk about the mysterious advantages of lender credits. What exactly makes them so mysterious? What are they? You know, we don’t really hear much about them. Lender credits go against the way we’re supposed to think: the lowest rate is the best. Many have heard about paying points. Points is a scenario where you…