Buying a home for the first time is a significant milestone. However, a survey of recent and prospective first-time homebuyers has found that 57% feel like they can’t afford home ownership, while 44% fear making costly mistakes. When making these major financial decisions, the last thing you want is to make a mistake. While mortgages can help you, navigating their ins and outs can leave you confused. If you’re looking for tips on handling them, consider following the example of these influential people.
Use mortgages to build wealth
While celebrities probably have more than enough to buy luxury homes with cash, some still turn to lenders to finance their homes. Take superpower couple Beyoncé and Jay Z, who financed their $88 million mansion in Bel Air with a $52.8 million mortgage from Goldman Sachs. Even if you’re a celebrity, taking out a mortgage allows you to use your cash to make other investments that yield greater returns than the interest paid on mortgages. While you might be taking out a much smaller loan, seeking financing for your home can leave your assets liquid so you can invest them elsewhere and build your wealth.
Find lenders who’ve digitized their operations
You can also get advice from Nima Ghamsari, who focused on automating some of the processes that had been challenging lenders prior to his services. Before becoming a Silicon Valley startup founder, Nima Ghamsari had been a poker semi-pro. Although he received financial assistance, he needed income to support his living expenses. So he played online poker with real money for a living. Ghamsari was able to use it to fund his education and later his career in tech. Since some poker sites don’t put a cap on how much money you deposit into your account, Ghamsari learned to manage his money better — and it was one of the things that inspired him to found a startup centered on the mortgage industry. He founded Blend Labs, a cloud banking infrastructure service that now caters to over 287 banks in America including First Republic Bank and Wells Fargo. Blend Labs’s digital infrastructure makes it quicker and easier for lenders to cater to your mortgage applications. Ultimately, this means that choosing lenders with digitalized services to meet your needs—like those who avail of Blend Labs’ services—can ensure your mortgage application process becomes less stressful.
Look for lenders that prioritize diversity
Sometimes, the ease of securing a loan depends on the lender. Often, discrimination can be a roadblock to homeownership, and people belonging to underserved communities find the process of financing a home more challenging. The disparities are evident when it comes to racial and socioeconomic representation. Even prominent athletes like Houston Rockets’ Martyn ‘Moochie’ Norris had to secure assistance from a lender that prioritized a diverse client base. This is because athletes — and in particular, Black athletes — are typically excluded from conversations about real estate and asset management. These are the kinds of representational gaps we are dedicated to addressing here at Voltage Mortgages. We understand the importance of having a diversity of mortgage lenders. Spearheaded by Jackie Braden, our team of professional and expert loan officers focuses on providing homeownership opportunities to underserved borrowers by tailoring our loan products to each client’s specific needs and situation. By ensuring your loans are taken care of by true professionals who don’t discriminate, you can easily overcome any diversity-related hurdles you may face — just like Moochie Norris did.
Fund a home with creative solutions
Even though TikTok stars like Charli D’Amelio can earn up to $17.5 million, influencers still have to turn to specialist mortgage advice to purchase homes. Indeed, one of the best tips for first-time homebuyers is to find a loan officer who can offer you creative solutions for funding your home. This is precisely what Mark Steinle of Knight Frank Finance did for his client, a UK-based influencer. Steinle found a creative bank willing to offer his client a mortgage based on income and expenditure instead of multiples of income. It goes to show that sometimes, your home financing solution lies in the more creative efforts exerted by lenders.
It’s easy to be confused by how complex mortgages are. These four influential people show that when you understand your resources, it’ll be easier for you to find the best deal possible.