Best way to maximize my appeal to a mortgage lender?

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone, 

This is my first foray into the mortgage board, I usually hang out in credit card land. So be gentle with me. 

I am thinking about possibly buying a home at some point in the medium future (in 3-5 years). Obviously this is a long time away, but I think it's best to start early with these things. 

My question relates to what I can do in the meantime to make myself most appealing to a lender. 

I have only a two year credit history but it is spotless, no baddies, my FICOs are in the 700s to 750s. The oldest thing resembling credit that I can document is a phone bill which I have paid personally since september of '08. I currently have 5 credit cards, all from reputable lenders, with limits between 1000 and 12,000. In total I have ~$37,000 in credit available to me and my current income is around 38k. Obviously income will be different in 3 years, hopefully larger. 

Besides saving as much money as possible for a down payment, what else might I want to do? Would being added as an authorized user on a ~7 year old credit card help by extending my credit history? I understand that mortgage underwriters don't count AU accounts, but would that help by extending my credit history or will they just ignore that too? 

Thanks for any input. 

[ShanetheMortgageMan]

Your credit history is excellent, just keep on doing what you've been doing... keep revolving balances low, make your payments on time, and don't overextend yourself.  The longest amount of credit history that you should need is just 1 year, so if you have 2 and will have 5-7 by the time you apply your credit history will look great to underwriting.

Concentrate on savings up, ideally 20% if you can as you will avoid having to pay PMI (private mortgage insurance).

[ezdriver]

Congratulations on having established a strong credit profile and on setting home ownership as a goal.

You do not need any more credit. You are good to go with what you have. Your only challenge is to save as large a downpayment amount as is possble. Shoot for 20% and plan on minimum 5% as a fallback level. In addition to your down payment, plan on having 2% to 5% of your planned purchase price as a financial cushion to help you cover some closing costs and reserve requirements. Save...save....save!

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the good news guys. My hope is to be able to put a 30% down payment just to minimize risk.obviously whether or not this is feasable will depend on where i end up buying (much more likely in Chicago than in San Francisco etc). But it is good to know that i am in good shape on the credit side.