What could flowers teach us about home loan solutions for Florida home buyers?
If you have ever seen Disney's classic full-length animated film, "Alice in Wonderland," you've no doubt gotten the catchy tune "You Can Learn A Lot of Things from The Flowers" stuck in your head more than once. (As a mom of five, I know this Disney song-- and many others-- by heart.)
If you are a Floridian with a yard full of blooming flora, then you know from our year-round growing season that this catchy tune is actually true. It goes: "You can learn a lot of things from the flowers, but especially in the month of June." For Floridians, it's almost the month of "June" every month when it comes to observing what's blooming. For the Florida mortgage industry, it's really not so different. There's always something blooming, growing, and changing for Florida home buyers and their options for home loan solutions.
In my own garden, we are blessed to have an abundance of plumeria trees. These tropical plants produce the Aloha flowers used to make the Hawaiian lei, and I can personally testify to their heavenly, floral scent.
They thrive in the Florida sunshine and the Central Florida weather (northern Floridians might have better success with potted plumeria they can bring indoors during the winter, FYI).
However, I've discovered over recent years that this plant has a few lessons to offer that one could apply to life and, yes (here's my cheeseball moment), even the process of buying a home in Florida.
For example, I have a lot of clients who ask me: Can I buy a home now or do I need to wait?
If plumerias could talk, they might say: No flowers this year, but help me along and we'll see what next year brings. Sometimes, this tree needs to "take a break" from producing blooms, depending on many factors. A few questions one might ask about the tree's lack of flora: Did it get too much water during rainy season? Does it have an infestation or ailment, such as Mealybugs or plumeria rust? Does it have enough phosphorus content in the soil? Did it receive adequate sunlight?
The same could be said for mortgages: there are many factors that determine whether now is a good time for you to buy a home or not. There are external factors, such as interest rates, down payment requirements, closing costs, and more, that you can't control. However, there are internal factors that you can control (or work on) to help your home loan qualification, such as:
Credit
Employment
Assets
Debts
If one of these factors need to be nurtured (like a Plumeria not in bloom), or have an area of opportunity, then it might be wise for some clients to wait to buy a home.
In my experience, I have helped many clients (from first-time home buyers to experienced investors) nurture one or more of these factors to help them obtain the home they need for their family or growing business. Sometimes the process of nurturing is as quick as a few weeks. In other cases, it can take a year or more (with the buyer and I staying in touch throughout that time) to finally be able to reap what they've been sowing.
Just like the plumeria tree, sometimes it takes assessing where the need is, taking action with step-by-step nurturing, paying close attention to details along the way, and a whole lot of patience. As your trusted Florida mortgage consultant, that's the kind of service my clients get. That being said, I can also say from experience, that whether the answer is "now's the time" or "you may need to wait a while so we can work on this first," it's well worth the wait.
If you have any questions about whether you can buy a home now or need to wait, don't hesitate to get in touch.
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