Finding the right lender is the most important decision in the home-buying process — before you pick an agent, before you tour a house, before you fall in love with a listing. The lender is the one who tells you what you can actually borrow, and whether the payment works for your life. Get this decision wrong and everything after it is harder.
How to find a lender
Here are the four ways people actually find a lender:
- Realtor referral. If you already have a real estate agent you trust, ask them. They’ve worked with dozens of lenders and know which ones close on time and communicate well. This is the best way — a realtor who’s done a lot of deals with a lender has a working relationship that makes your transaction smoother.
- A friend or coworker who recently bought a home. Ask someone in your life who just bought: who did they use, and would they use them again? A referral from someone whose financial situation looks like yours is worth more than a hundred reviews from strangers.
- An online search. You can Google “loan officer near me” or search on Yelp and Facebook groups — but remember, most of those results are paid ads. Yelp skews toward reviews, Facebook home-buying groups can be useful, but neither one tells you whether the lender is good at first-time-buyer loans specifically.
- A referral from an organization. Some employers, unions, and community organizations have lender relationships. Worth asking.
One thing to know: it’s against federal law for a loan officer to pay a realtor or another referrer for sending you their way. If someone offers you a kickback for using their lender, walk away — that’s not a deal, it’s a violation.
The 10 questions to ask
Before you let anyone run your credit, ask these. A good lender will answer them clearly and directly. A bad one will dodge them.
- How long have you been working in the industry? A brand-new lender, or someone with less than a few years of experience, isn’t necessarily bad — but you want to know. Experience matters when a deal gets complicated.
- What types of loans do you primarily work on? FHA, conventional, VA, USDA — a lender who does mostly FHA will know FHA better than one who does mostly jumbo (the big loans above the standard limit). Make sure their expertise matches your situation.
- What types of loans do you like working on? This tells you what they’re good at — and whether they actually enjoy the kind of loan you need. A lender who likes doing down payment assistance will be better at it than one who tolerates it.
- What do you like about doing loans? This is a character question. You want someone who likes helping people buy homes, not someone who likes closing files.
- What is your communication style, and how often will we be talking? Email, text, phone — and how fast do they respond? Make sure their style matches yours. If you’re a texter and they’re an email-only person, you’ll be frustrated for 30 days.
- Do you work with a lot of first-time home buyers? You want a lender who knows the first-time-buyer process — the programs, the assistance, the hand-holding. If they mostly work with investors, you’re not their priority.
- Do you have any first-time home buyer or down payment assistance programs? This can help you decide if they’re at the right company to help you out. You might find a great loan officer at a company that doesn’t offer the program you need — and then they’re not the right fit, no matter how good they are.
- How long are your loans taking to close? Typical loans take about 30 days. Some companies can do them in 17 to 21 days. Ask them to be honest about their timeline — and ask what slows them down.
- What’s the market looking like right now? What should I know? By asking this question, you’re testing their knowledge. You’ve already told them you’re a first-time buyer. Do they know what’s happening in your market, or are they reading from a script?
- What do you need from me to get started? They’ll need your Social Security number, your date of birth, your driver’s license, your income, and your two-year address history. The more they ask, the more thorough they’re going to be. And that’s a good thing — you want them to be thorough.
Pre-approval is not pre-qualification
A pre-qualification is a rough guess based on what you tell a website. A pre-approval is a lender actually looking at your income, your credit, and your documents. Sellers care about the second one. I can do a pre-approval in 5 to 20 minutes with 2 pay stubs and 2 bank statements. That’s it. That’s the whole list to start. Be honest with me upfront — if something in your file is messy, I’d rather know now than find out in underwriting when there’s a deadline and a seller waiting.
How to compare lenders fairly
Don’t compare lenders on rate alone. Compare them on the total cost: rate, points (a point is 1% of the loan, paid upfront to get a lower rate), lender fees, and how fast they close.
Here’s the payment to anchor on: a $700,000 house on FHA — 3.5% down, 30-year fixed at 6.94% — is $5,881 a month, all in. If a lender quotes you something wildly different for the same loan, ask why. Run it in the Mortgage Payment Calculator with your real numbers before you commit.
My Take
The lowest rate on a website isn’t the cheapest loan. Ask the questions.
What to do with this
- If you have a realtor, ask them for a lender referral — it’s the best way.
- If you don’t, ask a friend or coworker who recently bought.
- Interview at least two lenders with the 10 questions above before you let anyone run your credit.
- Then start your pre-approval and I’ll run your exact numbers.
Hear me talk about finding a lender on the podcast: How to Choose a Mortgage Lender (September 17, 2026). And hear the pre-approval vs. pre-qualification breakdown: Pre-Approval vs. Pre-Qualification (October 5, 2026). Loan types hub: Loan Types.
Rates move. Your actual payment depends on your rate, your credit, your county’s tax rate, and your insurance. This is education, not a rate quote or a loan approval.