1. Pre-Approval—You’ve spoke with us. You know what you need to do in order to get a loan and you know how much house you can afford to buy. If we have given you the go ahead you can start looking for home.
    
2. Sign a Contract—You have found a home. At this point you work with your realtor to negotiate and solidify a contract.
    
3. Sign Loan Application—Once you have executed a contract, the realtor will fax a copy to our office. You need to call us to make arrangements to sign your initial loan paperwork and get us copies of any documentation we may need.
    
4. Appraisal and Title—Once you have signed your loan paperwork your loan officer will order an appraisal to determine the value of the home and title work to insure all liens on the home are paid before you become the owner. This process is performed by third parties who do not work for Alcova Mortgage. It normally takes a week or longer before we receive these reports. In the meantime, we will be working on verifying any items the underwriter may need such as employment or assets.
    
5. Insurance—You are responsible for obtaining hazard insurance to cover your new home. While we are waiting for the appraisal to be done is a good time to select an insurance agent. Once you have made your decision, have them give us a call and we will take it from there.
    
6. Underwriting Submission—Once we receive the appraisal, we submit your file including your income documents, assets documents, purchase contract, etc. to the underwriter. This person works for the lender that will be funding your loan and their job is to verify all information provided on your loan application to insure that you qualify for the loan. The underwriter does not work for Alcova Mortgage so we are simply at their mercy!
    
7. Conditions—After the underwriter reviews your file they will send us a list of conditions. These are basically additional items they need to verify. Sometimes these are items that were left out of the initial submission because they weren’t available at the time and sometimes the underwriter is asking for additional clarification. In either case we will call you and let you know what we need.
    
8. Clear to Close—Once we receive all the conditions we submit them to the underwriter. As long as the underwriter doesn’t need any further information, they will issue a clear to close. If not, go back step 6.
    
9. Schedule Closing—Although your contract may have a target closing date, this is the point where we schedule an actual closing date and time for you to sign your final loan paperwork. We will order all those documents from the lender and they will be sent directly to the settlement agent. This can take a day or two from the time the Clear to Close was issued from the lender.
    
10. Closing—The settlement agent will prepare your final loan documents for you to sign.
     
11. Funding—At this point the lender will wire the amount of the loan to the settlement agent. That money will be added to any funds you were required to bring to closing.
     
12. Recording—The settlement agent will record the transfer at the county courthouse.

Congratulations! You now own a new home!