Effect of Job Change on In-Progress Mortgage Application
Best advice is to ask your lender.  That being said, if you are changing jobs, but keeping the same type of job you are usually ok and if the loan was approved before, it would still be approved. If you switch from W-2 to 1099 or vice-versa, permanent to contract, switch industries (software dev to accountant), or make less money there is a strong risk of the loan being declined. I recommend you ask this question to a qualified mortgage broker.  We just closed on our first house.  My wife & I have had several years of stable jobs, good credit scores, and a small side business with 1040 Schedule-C income... and we were surprised by the overwhelming amount of documentation we needed for the loan.  For example, we had 3 checks deposited to our bank account for $37.95.  We had to provide copies of the checks, deposit slip and a letter explaining the deposit.  One reason we might have had so much trouble:  the mortgage broker we selected sold our loan to a very picky lender.  On the plus side, we obtained a competitive rate with extremely low closing costs on a 30 year fixed mortgage.  However, I can't imagine the headaches we would've incurred if one of us were changing jobs to 1099 income. I just closed on a refi last week Thursday. The app went to the lender mid to late May. The lender called my employer for an employment verification on the Monday before closing. I would wait till after the loan funds to change jobs. FWIW, we signed on Thursday afternoon, escrow had to FedEx the originals to the lender on Friday, lender should have received it on Monday, we are still waiting to fund. I expect the loan to fund no later than tomorrow.
This is at the bottom of my list of concerns, as both an employee and an employee.  When hiring, its because I have work that needs to be done.  I want to get someone in as quickly as possible, so I really don't care about holidays.  Holiday pay also doesn't come out of my budget, so that doesn't enter in the decision. As a employee, if I'm unemployed I want to start as soon as possible.  If switching jobs, I'm going to get paid for the holiday at one job or another, so it really doesn't matter.  The last time I changed employers, I started the second week of January.  That was more driven by moving concerns than anything else. Closing a credit card decreases your total available balance, which can have a small negative effect if that credit card is a significant portion of your available credit.  If it is not, then it likely will have little impact on your credit in that department. However, the case you explained - get a card, use it for a short while, then dump it - won't have much long-term impact to your available credit, since you will end up with the same amount as you started. The second factor will be the average age of accounts.  This will affect you both in the short and long term, if you've had accounts open for a fairly long time, but won't impact you much if your credit history is fairly short.  Even closed accounts affect the Average Age of Accounts for FICO scores (but not for some other scoring methods such as VantageScore).  If you have only one other account, and it was 10 years old, then opening and closing this decreases your average age of accounts from 10 to 5 years - a significant hit which will not go away for years (10+ years in some cases, though usually 7 years).  This will lower your score some.  If you have had a lot of accounts, though (including things like mortgage, student loan, etc.), this won't have as significant of an impact, and if you had a short history in the first place, it won't hurt you much either. The third factor will be the hard credit pull.  That will have a small negative impact for around six months; so don't do this just before getting a mortgage, but mostly this won't be a significant impactor for you. "As a former consumer credit counselor, who worked with struggling homeowners and first time homebuyers I would argue that it is a mistake for lenders to rely on gross income and assumptions on what an applicant spends their income on. I think lenders do this because they believe it is efficient and may not understand the long term ramifications for the stakeholders, e.g. the borrower, the lender, the servicer, the investor, the broker, the taxpayer, the marshall, the foreclosure lawyers etc. Or lenders do know the impact of a superficial mortgage screening, and intentionally want to enrich themselves in the short term while harming other stakeholders in the long term. Developing a budget that reflects what a person can realistically spend on their mortgage takes much longer than signing up for a Rocket mortgage. I would say an hour minimum for the first appointment to get a baseline, and at least two follow up appointments to make adustments soon after or whenever a borrower's financial situation changes dramatically. Credit counselors factor in all of the factors mentioned above, i.e. take home pay, future pay vs current pay, the ability to adjust deductions, seasonal expenses, multiple sources of income and their frequency, debt load etc. Budgets are always fluctuating, but when it is done right by a qualified professional the result is a much more accurate financial picture.  The consequences for not doing this type of old-school due diligence, or for willfully choosing to skip it, are varied. First off, mortgages will be given to homeowners who should never have qualified in the first place, and likewise denied to homeowners who should qualify. This will result in market distortion and this distortion was a primary contributor to the 2008 subprime mortgage crisis and the wave of foreclosures that came with it. Another consequence is the stripping of wealth from minority communities since they are often targeted by the most unscrupulous of lenders. Additionally, the securitization of mortgages based on poor diligence at the loan officer level means loan portfolio ratings are questionable, investors will lose money, and small banks who are heavily invested will fail as they did in the past. Depending on the federal enforcement of Dodd Frank Act, the taxpayers may or may not have to pick up the bill from a bailout of a big mortgage bank that was ""too big to fail,"" via higher taxes, lost jobs, lost homes, and other negative externalities that were not accounted for by the loan officer, or willfully ignored.  Lastly, borrowers also have a responsibility to provide accurate financial information, which they don't always do. Unfortunately, in a capitalistic society where property is commoditized instead of communal, there is always mistrust, competition, the fear that you will be left behind, or the desire to get ahead. This could incentivize cheating by either the, borrower, the broker/lender, or both in this example e.g. no-doc negative amatorizing loans. This is just one of many other negative externalities. So the only true fix would be a switch to communal land ownership. In the interim, I would push for universal borrower access to low cost consumer credit counselors and a change in loan officer training and incentive structure." My possible new job requires me to do dfast and ccar among others.  A few questions   1) My background is public accounting and tax. I noted that these jobs requires experience from public firms. My past experience has nothing to do with banking. Any reasons? I have been reading up dfast in the past week and it seems they trust me to pick up fast. Another job ad from another bank indicates the same thing.   2) What type of job this is under? I tried risk analyst but quite a lot of times the results are quite different from what my job is.  3) What is the job outlook? My eventual plan is to a more data analyst role and/or job opportunities in EU. Currently in EA/SEA market.   4) Any programming language should I learn to speed up data extraction? I will be learning either python/r. And will surface 3 do? My current laptop is not working and the repair shop indicates the costs of repairing doesnt worth it. "(I'm a bit surprised that nobody talked about the impact of multiple inquiries on a loan, since OP is concerned with credit building. Probably an answer as opposed to a comment is justified.) Yes. In fact when you shop for auto loan you are expected to have your credit score/report be pulled by different banks, credit unions, and/or the financing arm of the car manufacturer or the dealership, so that you can hopefully get the best rate possible. This is especially true if the dealer is requesting quotes on rates on your behalf, as they would probably use a batch process to send out applications to multiple financial institutions all at once. Yes, and a bit unusual - CALVERT TOYO (your dealer) pulled your report twice on the same day. Presumably they are not getting any new information on the second pull. Maybe a fat finger? Regardless, you should not worry about this too much (to be explained below). I would say ""don't bother"". The idea behind hard inquiries lowering credit score is that lenders see the number of hard inquiries as your desire for credit. Too high a number is often viewed as either ""desperate for credit"" or ""unable to qualify for credit"".  But as explained above, it is very common for a person to request quotes for multiple financial institutions and thus to have multiple hard inquiries in a short period of time when shopping for loans. To account for that, the credit bureau's model would usually combine hard inquiries for a same type of loan (auto, mortgage, etc.) within 30 days. Hence a person sending quote request to 3 banks won't be rated higher for credit than if he were to request quotes from 5 banks.  Therefore in your case your credit profile is not going to be different if you had been pulled just once. my credit score goes down for 15 points I'm assuming you are talking about the credit score provided by Credit Karma. The score CK provided is FAKO. The score lenders care about is FICO. They are well correlated but still different. Google these two terms and you should be able to figure out the difference quickly. You can also refer to my answer to a different question here: Equifax credit score discrepancy in 1 month, why?" Lenders want to judge the stability of the stated income. Because your are new to being self-employed they are concerned about your viability. It may be possible to find another lender who will consider a shorter term of business, but it looks like the lender wants 24 months of business. You should start with your current bank/credit Union, and if they say no ask what more info you need to provide. You mention that you would quit right after getting approved. But in the United States there would be one last check as a part of closing. Therefore it would be best to wait until after closing to quit your job. Waiting until after closing would also protect you from some hiccup that causes a delay in closing, thus requiring the need to reapply for the loan. No, it will have no negative impact on getting a mortgage. You are building up a history with regular payments and are not carrying a balance on the card each month. Your ability to get a mortgage will ultimately be based on other things. Money Saving Expert has a good guide on what will affect your credit score. A further discussion on the topic that backs up that what a mortgage company is interested in is affordability and a stable history. They really don't care about utilisation ratios.  (Though might be spooked by almost maxed out cards - sign of poor spending control, or large unused limits - too easy to go into bad debt.) "This article on the landlord website Property118.com shows a simple example, demonstrating that a private landlord with a mortgage could see a huge jump in their effective tax rate (in this case, from 18% to 67% by 2020), while a corporate landlord will see no change at all. There's also a link in that article to a detailed report which is highly critical of the tax changes. The government obviously take a different view! (See here for more worked examples of how the tax changes will be applied). More information can be found on this on various landlord sites. A key phrase to look for is ""section 24"", referring to the section of the Finance (No. 2) Act 2015 which implements the change. Note that this change only applies to private landlords (i.e. those who own a property personally, rather than through a company), and who have a mortgage on the property, and who (after the new calculations) are higher or additional rate taxpayers." Would it be worth legitimizing his business or is it too late at this point? To be blunt, you're asking if we recommend that he stop breaking the law. The answer is obviously yes, he should be declaring his income. And it would probably benefit him to get on the same page as his employer (or client) so they can both start obeying the law together. Once he's filed a tax return for 2016 that would certainly help his cause as far as a lender is concerned, and  as soon as he can provide some recent pay stubs (or paid invoices) he should be ready to move forward on the mortgage based on that additional income. In some cases, especially but not only for subprime loans, they are actually testing whether you will lie to them. (Discovered this when working on a loan origination applicatíon for car dealers -- they explicitly did not want us to autocomplete some values because that might remind applicants that answers would be checked.) If I recall correctly, the pay schedule is such that you initially pay mostly interest.  As James Roth suggests, look at the terms of the loan, specifically the payment schedule.  It should detail how much is being applied to interest and how much to the actual balance. The most likely reason for this is that the relocation company wants to have a guaranteed sale so as to get a new mortgage in the new location.  Understand that the relocation company generally works for a prospective employer.  So they are trying to make the process as painless as possible for the homeowner (who is probably getting hired as a professional, either a manager or someone like an engineer or accountant).   If the sale is guaranteed to go through regardless of any problems, then it is easy for them to arrange a new mortgage.  In fact, they may bridge the gap by securing the initial financing and making the downpayment, then use the payout from the house you are buying to buy out their position.  That puts them on the hook for a bunch of money (a downpayment on a house) while they're waiting on the house you're purchasing to close.   This does not necessarily mean that there is anything wrong with the house.  The relocation company would only know about something wrong if the owner had disclosed it.  They don't really care about the house they're selling.  Their job is to make the transition easy.  With a relocation company, it is more likely that they are simply in a hurry and want to avoid a busted purchase.  If this sale fails to go through for any reason, they have to start over.  That could make the employment change fall through.   This is a variation of a no contingencies sale.  Sellers like no contingencies sales because they are easier.  Buyers dislike them because their protections are weaker.  But some buyers will offer them because they get better prices that way.  In particular, house flippers will do this frequently so as to get the house for less money than they might otherwise pay.  This is better than a pure no contingencies sale, as they are agreeing to the repairs.   This is a reasonable excuse to not proceed with the transaction.  If this makes you so uncomfortable that you'd rather continue looking, that's fine.  However, it also gives you a bit of leverage, as it means that they are motivated to close this transaction quickly.  You can consider any of the following:   Or you can do some combination of those or something else entirely that makes you fell more secure.  If you do decide to move forward with any version of this provision, get a real estate lawyer to draft the agreement.  Also, insist on disclosure of any previous failed sales and the reason for the failure before signing the agreement.  The lawyer can make that request in such a way as to get a truthful response.   And again, in case you missed it when I said this earlier.  You can say no and simply refuse to move forward with such a provision.  You may not get the house, but you'll save a certain amount of worry.  If you do move forward, you should be sure that you are getting a good deal.  They're asking for special provisions; they should bear the cost of that.  Either your current deal is already good (and it may be) or you should make them adjust until it is. "tl;dr: Your best course of action is probably to do a soft pull (check your own credit) and provide that to the lender for an unofficial pre-approval to get the ball rolling. The long of it: The loan officer is mostly correct, and I have recent personal evidence that corroborates that. A few months ago I looked into refinancing a mortgage on a rental property, and I allowed 3 different lenders to do a hard inquiry within 1 week of each other. I saw all 3 inquires appear on reports from each of the 3 credit bureaus (EQ/TU/EX), but it was only counted as a single inquiry in my score factors. But as you have suggested, this breaks down when you know that you won't be purchasing right away, because then you will have multiple hard inquiries at least a few months apart which could possibly have a (minor) negative impact on your score. However minor it is, you might as well try to avoid it if you can. I have played around with the simulator on myfico.com, and have found inquiries to have the following effect on your credit score using the FICO Score 8 model: With one inquiry, your scores will adjust as such: Two inquiries: Three inquiries: Here's a helpful quote from the simulator notes: ""Credit inquiries remain on your credit report for 2 years, but FICO Scores only consider credit inquiries from the past 12 months."" Of course, take that with a grain of salt, as myfico provides the following disclaimer: The Simulator is provided for informational purposes only and should not be expected to provide accurate predictions in all situations. Consequently, we make no promise or guarantee with regard to the Simulator. Having said all that, in your situation, if you know with certainty that you will not be purchasing right away, then I would recommend doing a soft pull to get your scores now (check your credit yourself), and see if the lender will use those numbers to estimate your pre-approval. One possible downside of this is the lender may not be able to give you an official pre-approval letter based on your soft pull. I wouldn't worry too much about that though since if you are suddenly ready to purchase you could just tell them to go ahead with the hard pull so they can furnish an official pre-approval letter. Interesting Side Note: Last month I applied for a new mortgage and my score was about 40 points lower than it was 3 months ago. At first I thought this was due to my recent refinancing of property and the credit inquiries that came along with it, but then I noticed that one of my business credit cards had recently accrued a high balance. It just so happens that this particular business CC reports to my personal credit report (most likely in error but I never bothered to do anything about it). I immediately paid that CC off in full, and checked my credit 20 days later after it had reported, and my score shot back up by over 30 points. I called my lender and instructed them to re-pull my credit (hard inquiry), which they did, and this pushed me back up into the best mortgage rate category. Yes, I purposely requested another hard pull, but it shouldn't affect my score since it was within 45 days, and that maneuver will save me thousands in the long run." That metric is not very useful for anything other than very extremely long trading periods. Most strategies or concerned with price movement over much shorter time frames, 15 mins, 1 hr, 4 hr, daily, weekly, monthly. The MA or moving average is a trend following lagging indicator used to smooth out price fluctuations and more accurately reflect the price of trading instrument such as a stock (AAPL), commodity, or currency pair. Traders are generally concerned with current market trends and price action of the instrument they are trading. As such, an extremely long MA (average daily price, over a period of 365 days) are generally not that important.