Bad credit mortgages? Yep! They are out there!

And bad credit mortgages can be a two edge sword, so be careful and read the fine print! Don't take on more debt than you can afford and a really nice big home that feels like heaven will soon fade if payments are a strain!

Predatory lending is a bad practise and it starts with the home buyer! Don't get me wrong, I'm not blaming home buyers entirely because a lot of them were coaxed into a home they could not afford with a mortgage that really was too good to be true!

You must use your common sense! First time home buyers should get prequalified before going out home shopping. This will save you a lot of time.

Your lending institution will run your credit, look at your income and your debt load (how much you already owe) and tell you how much they are willing to lend you.

The difference between what you can borrow and what you want to spend can increase your down payment!

Bad credit mortgages usually require about 20% down so if you are approved for let's say $200,000.00 Maximum, you should be looking into a home that is priced and APPRAISED at about $150,000.00 or less for first time home buyers or bad credit borrowers.

If you havent enrolled in a credit monitoring service, do this first!! I know i sound like a broken record, but I got my first home on a bad credit mortgage and if I had a credit monitoring service, I could have had time to correect errors on my credit reports and saved myself about $6500.00 in closing costs!!!! This is the best investment you can make in repairing your credit and keeping an eye on your score!

You are free to look at your own credit as often as you want to and this is called a soft inquiry. With Identity Theft becoming the fastest rising crime in America, checking your credit often is a good habit to get into!

Once you have your credit reports, look them over well and make notes and remarks about every negative item in there. Look for ALL possible errors and innacurate, misleading and unverifiable information you can find and use this as a basis to begin challenging your credit reports and making repairs!

I'll soon have another section about the step by step process to cleaning up your reports and scores so get my RSS feed and you will be notified when I do.

To go to the section how credit scoring works click the link in this sentence!

To go back to the first page if you need to re-read it, click on the bad credit mortgages link here.