Few people buy homes in cash; most people make their purchase with home mortgages. If you are applying for a home mortgage, you should know that your actions during the application and processing will have a huge influence on your results. It may determine whether you qualify for the mortgage, how much you qualify for, and even the cost of the loan. Here are a few mistakes that you need to avoid when applying for a mortgage:

Not Negotiating Mortgage Fees

When applying for a mortgage, it is not just the mortgage size and interest rates that are negotiable; everything is negotiable. This means you should negotiate the application fee, loan origination fee, underwriting fee, and broker fee, as well as any other fee that the financier may charge. Since these fees are typically charged as percentages of the mortgage, even a small reduction can give you big savings. In fact, you should also be careful not to focus on one feature of the mortgage (say, its size) at the expense of other relevant features (such as term, cost, and fees).

Making a Big Expenditure During the Processing

Another thing you should know is that you should be very careful with your financial life when processing a mortgage. You don't want anything that will destabilize the assessment the mortgage provider has already done on you. Buying a car on loan while also processing a mortgage application, for example, can easily mess up your credit score and debt-to-income ratio.

Relying on a Single Mortgage Quote

How many mortgage quotes should you get when buying a home? You got it wrong if your answer is one; you should get multiple quotes. This is because a mortgage application is just like shopping for any service; you need to analyze different service providers, their costs, and their terms and conditions before selecting the best one. Just make sure you get all the quotes within a couple weeks of each other to minimize the negative effect of the quotes on your credit score.

Making a Small Down Payment

Having a small down payment is not only bad for your home purchase bid (it weakens the bid), but it's also likely to make your mortgage expensive. This is because the lower your down payment is, the higher the mortgage you will need from the financier. A big mortgage means a high risk for the financier, and they must cover themselves by increasing the applicable fees.

Hopefully, you will not make any mistakes that will scuttle your mortgage application process.