@Sk323i wrote:Could shopping around potentially impact me from being able to close on this one?
the rate is locked - but I could go to my current bank - and see what they can do.
TL;DR - It costs you nothing to check in a 14 day period for mortgage inquiries, so I highly recommend it. When they ask you to explain the inquiries on an LOE, "rate shopping" will suffice. That's expected from more sophisticated borrowers TBH.
Technical details.
Within a 14 day period you can rack up as many mortgage inquiries as you want and it will be counted as a single inquiry from a credit impact perspective. 14 days is the smallest window of all of the scores used on a trimerge report (EX FICO 2), and if that's the low score and thus irrelevant you're at at 30 days for mortgage inquiry bundling I believe for EQ FICO 5 and TU publishes it at 45 days for TU FICO 4, but go with the smaller window.
You cannot get a guarunteed rate until you basically lock it, which generally requires payment of the appraisal fee plus possibly a little more for all lenders that I'm aware of. That's a $500-$650 expense or so; however, you can absolutely just ask for an estimate from multiple places and see, and honestly you should.
My own path last week though I was asking for as close to 0 points as possible and PMI was mostly a wash with all 3:
Monday: asked Chase for an estimate and they checked credit. Came back at 10% down, 3.75% and ~$1500 lender fee and about $750 in lender credits.
Wednesday: after talking to a RE friend of mine on this forum, did a sanity check with Sebonic who checked credit and came back with 5% down 3.5% with $0 in lender fees and lender credit.
Friday: after finding a place, which was new construction, one of builder's preferred lenders was BOFA who was running an interesting credit (which I don't 100% know for a fact I qualify for regardless of what BOFA is saying) they came with 5% down and 3.25% and with a big lender credit which basically covers their 1400 lender fee, a bunch of other closing cost items, and even bought ~.5 points.
Knowing all that, I pulled the trigger on the loan app with BOFA, and I will probably hedge things with Sebonic cause I'm worried and an additional ~$500 I'm ok with as a lender hedge if it turns out I suddenly don't qualify. As it was the LO at Sebonic was straight and to the point: because we have a 2-2.5 month close on the new construction, wasn't really any point in doing the deed right now because they weren't going to work on the file anytime soon which was totally fair and upstanding of them. I also don't think rates are going to move appreciably upward in that time anyway, if anything might move down. Actually in all frankness, if it wasn't a preferred lender with a godlike credit which most home purchases aren't, I would've taken the Sebonic deal without thinking twice as it's a good one and they close on time from all I was able to find out.
Total impact so far: 1 scoreable inquiry on all 3 bureaus, and $625 paid to BOFA so far with checking 3 lenders, possible additional appraisal fee if I get a bad feeling with BOFA though allegedly they're going to do a first UW pass next week because they're slow right now and I'm not in the same queue for them as the refinances so I might not need that fee at all as UW will catch the credit if I'm not legit on it (income caps).
