Category: Buyers

Short answer: on most conventional purchases of a one-unit home, the ADU’s rent counts for nothing toward your qualifying income. On an FHA loan it can count, up to 75% of the appraiser’s fair market rent, capped at 30% of your total effective income. That gap is worth real buying power, and most buyers do not find out about it until they are already in escrow.

I have had three versions of the same conversation in the last month. A buyer finds a San Diego house with a permitted ADU out back, does the math on the rent, and assumes the unit helps them qualify. In two of the three, it did not. Nothing was wrong with the property. It was the loan they had already picked.

Who this is for

San Diego buyers looking at a single-family home that already has a permitted accessory dwelling unit: a converted garage, a detached casita, a JADU carved out of the main house. After several years of ADU-friendly state law, these are common enough that you will run into one on an ordinary Saturday of showings.

This is not about building an ADU. It is about buying a house that already has one, and what that unit does and does not do to the financing.

Why the timing is unusual right now

Two numbers are moving in opposite directions. Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the 30-year fixed national average at 6.95% on September 17, 2026, up from 6.76% the week before. A 19-basis-point move in a single week is the largest I have tracked in this survey in some time, and it is a national average for comparison only, not an offer or a quote.

At the same time, San Diego inventory has been running near 6,400 active listings and roughly 3.2 months of supply, the loosest this market has been since 2019. So payments got more expensive in the same month that buyers got more room to negotiate. That combination is exactly why ADU properties are getting a second look: buyers are hunting for something that offsets the payment.

Which makes it worth knowing, before you write an offer, whether the rent actually does that on paper.

What each loan type actually does with ADU rent

The rules are set by the agency behind the loan, not by the lender and not by the appraiser.

The FHA treatment comes from HUD Mortgagee Letter 2023-17, effective October 2023. Guidelines change, so treat this as the framework rather than the final word on any specific file.

What that looks like in dollars

Say the appraiser reports fair market rent on the ADU at $1,800 a month, and your total monthly effective income before the ADU is $9,000.

• FHA allows 75% of $1,800, which is $1,350.
• The 30% cap on total effective income would be $2,700, so the full $1,350 survives the cap.
• Your effective income goes from $9,000 to $10,350.

On a conventional one-unit loan, the same property produces $0 of qualifying income from that unit. Same house, same tenant, same rent. The difference is entirely which agency’s rulebook your loan sits under.

Note the direction of the error most buyers make. They assume the rent helps and it does not, so they write an offer they cannot support. The fix is free and takes one phone call before you write.

Two things the appraisal has to establish

Even on FHA, the income does not appear by assertion. Underwriting needs the appraisal report plus a Single Family Comparable Rent Schedule establishing market rent. And separately, the appraiser has to treat the unit as a legitimate ADU rather than unpermitted square footage.

That second point is where San Diego deals actually die. A garage conversion done without permits is not an ADU for lending purposes, no matter how nicely it is finished or how long a tenant has lived in it. If the permit history does not support it, the rent question never even comes up, because the unit does not exist as far as the file is concerned. Ask for the permit record early, not during escrow.

When buying for the ADU is the wrong move

Three cases where I would tell you to slow down.

• You need the rent to make the payment work. If the budget only survives with a tenant in place, you have bought a vacancy risk, not a discount. Tenants turn over. Run the payment without the rent and see if you still like it.
• The ADU is the only reason the house appeals to you. ADU premiums are real and already in the price. You are usually paying for that unit up front.
• You are planning a cash-out refinance later to recoup the purchase. On FHA that ADU income is off the table for cash-out, which surprises people who mapped out a two-step plan.

Frequently asked questions

Does it matter if the ADU is already rented?

It can. An existing lease gives underwriting a second data point, and the usable figure is the lesser of that lease and the appraiser’s market rent. A lease well above market does not raise the number.

Can I count ADU income on a conventional loan ever?

Agency guidelines move, and there are narrow programs and exceptions. The safe planning assumption on a standard conventional one-unit purchase is no, then confirm against current guidelines for your specific scenario before you rely on it.

Is a JADU treated the same as a detached ADU?

Not always. Junior ADUs carved out of the existing home have their own permitting path and can be treated differently in underwriting. Get the unit classified correctly before assuming anything about the income.

What if the ADU turns out to be unpermitted?

Then it is square footage with a kitchen in it, not income. That is a separate and much bigger conversation, and it belongs to your agent and the seller before it belongs to your lender.

Where to start

If an ADU property is on your list, the order of operations matters: confirm the permit history, then find out what your loan type does with the rent, then decide what to offer. Doing it in that order costs nothing. Doing it backwards costs you the earnest money conversation.

If you want the numbers run on a specific property before you write, start a pre-qualification here and we can model it both ways, with the ADU income and without it, so you can see the actual gap.

For the broader process, my complete 2026 guide to buying a house in San Diego walks through the full timeline. If you are weighing a condo instead, condo financing has its own set of hurdles. And if student loan payments are part of your debt picture, here is how those actually get counted.

Ron Berg is a mortgage professional with The Berg Group, powered by C2 Financial Corp, serving San Diego and California. He writes about the mechanics of home financing, one topic at a time. Find more at bergequitygroup.com/blog or book a call.

Ronald Berg, NMLS #974839. C2 Financial Corp, NMLS #135622. Equal Housing Opportunity. Rates referenced are cited national averages from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey as of September 17, 2026, provided for comparison only. They are not an offer, a quote, or a commitment to lend, and they are not available to any particular borrower. All loan scenarios are subject to underwriting review, program guidelines, and property eligibility. Guidelines cited are current as of publication and are subject to change. This article is educational and is not tax or legal advice.

A mortgage rate lock in San Diego holds a quoted interest rate for a set number of days — usually 30 to 60 — while your loan is underwritten and your escrow closes. What most buyers get wrong is the second half: a lock is not a promise that your rate cannot change. It is a promise with an expiration date and a list of conditions attached, and this week is a bad week to learn that the hard way.

Freddie Mac’s weekly survey put the 30-year fixed national average at 6.95% on September 17, 2026, up from 6.76% the week before and 6.26% a year ago. That is the fourth consecutive weekly increase and the largest one-week move in about sixteen months. It followed the Federal Reserve’s quarter-point increase on September 16 — its first hike since 2023 — with the 10-year Treasury yield hovering near 5%, which is the benchmark 30-year mortgage pricing actually tracks.

Who this is for

San Diego buyers who are in escrow right now, or about to write an offer, and who just watched the market move against them by nearly two-tenths of a point in seven days. If you are shopping with a pre-approval letter from three weeks ago, the number on it is already history.

What a rate lock actually protects

A lock protects the pricing of a specific loan — a specific loan amount, property, occupancy type, program, credit profile and closing date — against market movement for the length of the lock period. That is genuinely valuable. In a week like this one, it is the difference between two very different payments.

Run it on a $900,000 San Diego purchase with 20% down, so a $720,000 loan, using this week’s national averages as the illustration:

That is $91 a month, about $1,096 a year, and roughly $32,900 over a full 30-year term — from one week of bond market movement. Looked at from the other direction: a buyer who could carry a $720,000 loan at last week’s average carries about $706,000 at this week’s, which is roughly $17,000 less house at the same down payment. Nothing about that buyer changed. The bond market did.

What a rate lock does not protect

This is the part that produces the phone calls I take at 4:45 on a Friday. A lock is tied to the file it was issued on. Change the file and the pricing can change with it.

• It does not survive the calendar. Locks expire on a date, not on a milestone. If your closing slips past it, the protection is gone.
• It does not survive a change in the loan. Switching programs, changing the down payment, adding or removing a borrower, or converting from primary residence to second home all re-price the loan.
• It does not survive a change in the property’s value. If the appraisal comes in low and the loan-to-value moves into a different tier, pricing adjustments follow.
• It does not survive a change in your credit. Financing furniture or opening a card during escrow can move a credit score across a tier line, and tiers are priced differently.
• It does not lock the property. A lock is a financing instrument, not a contract right. If the deal falls apart, so does the lock.

How long to lock in a San Diego escrow

Most San Diego purchase escrows run 30 to 45 days, and lock periods are usually chosen to cover that with a buffer. Buffer is the operative word. The things that push a San Diego closing past its lock date are specific and predictable:

• Condo and HOA document delays. Project review can add real time, especially on a building with open questions about reserves or repairs — I broke down what changed in 2026 condo financing here.
• Appraisal scheduling and reconsiderations. A disputed value takes days, not hours.
• Trust, probate and estate title work, which clusters in the fourth quarter and runs on a court’s calendar rather than yours.
• Repair negotiations that reopen after the inspection contingency, which is the most common way a smooth file turns into a scramble in the final stretch. I wrote about that pattern in why San Diego deals fall apart in the last ten days.

A longer initial lock generally costs a little more in pricing than a short one. An extension after the fact usually costs more than buying the longer lock would have. Extension fees are commonly quoted in fractions of a point, and on a $720,000 loan an eighth of a point is $900 — which is the whole argument for building the buffer in at the start rather than paying for it at the end.

What happens if rates fall after you lock

This is the question everyone asks in a rising week, and the honest answer is: it depends entirely on your lender and your program, and you should ask before you lock, not after. Some lock agreements include a one-time float-down provision that lets you capture part of a meaningful improvement in the market; many do not, and some charge for the option up front. The provision typically requires the market to move by a defined amount, not by a basis point or two, and it is usually usable once.

The practical move is to ask three questions before the lock is issued: how many days, what does an extension cost, and is there a float-down — and if so, what triggers it. Those three answers tell you more about your real exposure than the rate itself.

When locking early is the wrong call

I do not think every buyer should lock the moment they are in contract. If your closing date is genuinely uncertain — a short sale, a probate sale awaiting a confirmation hearing, new construction with a moving completion date — a lock you cannot use is an expense, not a protection. Sixty and 90-day locks exist precisely for these situations, and on a long new-construction timeline an extended lock is usually the more honest structure than a 30-day lock you will renew twice.

The other case: if the loan file still has an open question in it — income documentation that has not been reviewed, a property condition issue that might change the program — locking pricing on a loan that may not end up being the loan you close is how buyers end up paying for a re-lock.

What I would actually do this week

Two things, in order. First, get a current pre-approval rather than relying on a letter written before this month’s moves — not because anything about you changed, but because the payment on the same purchase price did. Second, before you write an offer, decide your escrow length and your lock length together, in the same conversation, rather than choosing a 30-day close and then discovering the file needs 45.

If you are earlier than that and still working out the sequence, start with the complete 2026 guide to buying a house in San Diego, which walks the whole process from budget to keys.

Frequently asked questions

Can I lock a rate before I have a property under contract?

Some lenders offer lock programs that begin before a specific property is identified; most locks are issued against an address. It is worth asking, but the standard sequence in San Diego is offer accepted, then lock.

Does a rate lock cost money?

Locks are usually built into the pricing rather than billed separately, which is why a longer lock generally shows up as a slightly higher rate or slightly higher cost rather than a line item. Extensions are more often charged directly.

What happens if my lock expires before closing?

You extend it at a cost, or you re-lock at current market pricing, which in a rising week is exactly the outcome the lock existed to prevent. Lenders also apply worst-case pricing rules on re-locks, so expiring and re-locking is rarely a way to catch a lower rate.

Is 6.95% the rate I would get?

No. That is a national average from Freddie Mac’s survey for conventional, conforming loans with strong credit and 20% down. Your actual pricing depends on your loan amount, credit, down payment, occupancy, property type and program. It is a market thermometer, not a quote.

Let’s look at your numbers before the next survey

If you are in escrow or about to be, the useful conversation is about your specific file — your closing timeline, your program, and how much buffer your lock actually needs. Start a pre-approval here and we will walk through the lock question together, or book a call on my calendar if you would rather talk it through first.

Ron Berg is a San Diego mortgage professional with The Berg Group, powered by C2 Financial Corporation, helping buyers, homeowners and referral partners across California, Nevada, Arizona and Maryland. Book a call.

Rates referenced are national averages published by Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey as of September 17, 2026, and Federal Reserve policy actions announced September 16, 2026 (federalreserve.gov). They are not an offer, quote, or commitment to lend, and individual pricing varies. This article is educational and is not financial, tax or legal advice. Ron Berg, NMLS #974839. C2 Financial Corporation, NMLS #135622. Equal Housing Opportunity.

7 minute read · For San Diego buyers carrying federal student loans — especially anyone who was on SAVE.

The short version

• A $0 student loan payment is not the same as $0 student loan debt on a mortgage application. Several programs will invent a payment for you.
• Every major loan program counts student loans differently, and the spread is enormous. On the same $80,000 balance, one program may count $0 and another may count $333 a month.
• SAVE ended after a March 10, 2026 court order. The new Repayment Assistance Plan (RAP) took effect July 1, 2026, and servicers began notifying former SAVE borrowers that same month with a 90-day window to choose a plan. For the first wave of notices, that window closes right about now.
• Whatever payment you land on is the number a lender is going to see on your credit report. Picking a repayment plan in September is, functionally, a mortgage decision.
• Freddie Mac’s national average 30-year fixed rate was 6.76% in the survey released September 10, 2026 — up from 6.71% the prior week, and 6.35% a year ago.

The thing almost everyone gets wrong

I have had a version of this conversation probably two hundred times: someone tells me their student loan payment is zero, so it should not affect anything.

I understand why that feels obviously true. Nothing leaves your checking account. Your budget does not feel it. And yet on a mortgage file, a $0 payment is one of the more expensive things you can bring to the table, because most loan programs refuse to believe it. They substitute a percentage of your outstanding balance instead — and the percentage they pick is not small.

In San Diego this matters more than it does almost anywhere else. When the purchase price is high, the housing payment eats most of the debt-to-income ratio before any other debt shows up. A phantom $400 student loan payment that would be an annoyance in Ohio can be the entire reason a San Diego file does not work.

Why this is a September problem and not a someday problem

The SAVE plan is over. It ended following a March 10, 2026 court order, and the Repayment Assistance Plan — RAP — went into effect on July 1, 2026. Starting that month, servicers began sending former SAVE borrowers notice that they had 90 days to choose a new repayment plan or be moved into one automatically.

Count forward from July and you land in late September and early October. Millions of people are about to have a new monthly student loan payment for the first time in years, and most of them are choosing a plan based on cash flow alone.

That is a reasonable way to choose. It is just incomplete. The plan you pick determines the number that shows up on your credit report, and that number walks into every mortgage conversation you have for the next several years. If buying is anywhere on your horizon — this year, next year — it is worth running the comparison before the automatic enrollment picks for you.

How each program counts it

Here is the part nobody explains clearly. These are the general agency rules as they stand in 2026. Individual lenders layer their own overlays on top, and documentation requirements vary, so treat this as the map and not the territory.

Read that table twice, because there are two genuinely counterintuitive things in it.

First: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are both “conventional,” and they land in completely different places on the same borrower. A file that will not work one way may work the other way with no change to your income, your down payment, or the house. That is not a loophole; it is just two different rulebooks that happen to share a category name.

Second, and this is the San Diego one: VA is the least forgiving of the four on student debt. In a county with this much military and veteran population, that surprises people every single time. The benefit is extraordinary in almost every other respect — but on student loans specifically, 5% of the balance divided by 12 is a heavier assumption than FHA’s 0.5% or a documented income-driven payment on a conventional loan.

What actually moves the number

Three things, in rough order of how often they matter:

1. Documentation, not the credit report alone. A credit report showing $0 is frequently not enough on its own. What carries weight is current documentation from the servicer — a statement or repayment schedule showing the actual required monthly amount. People lose deals over a missing PDF far more often than over a real debt problem.
2. Deferment and forbearance are the expensive statuses. Pausing payments feels like relief. On a mortgage file it triggers the highest assumed payment in most programs. If you are pausing payments specifically to look better on a loan application, that is backwards.
3. Which program you use. Given the table above, the same file can be comfortable or impossible depending on the rulebook. This is the single largest lever, and it is usually the one nobody checks.

When NOT to reshuffle your student loans

I would rather say this plainly than let anyone read the section above as a strategy guide.

Do not switch repayment plans purely to manufacture a lower number on a mortgage application. Repayment plans carry consequences far beyond the next twelve months — total interest paid, forgiveness timelines, whether payments count toward Public Service Loan Forgiveness. A plan that shaves $150 off a debt-to-income calculation and costs you years of qualifying PSLF payments is a terrible trade, and no house is worth it.

Do not consolidate in a hurry either. Consolidation can reset progress toward forgiveness. If you have any PSLF history at all, talk to your servicer or a student loan specialist before touching anything. That is their expertise, not mine, and I will say so every time.

And do not let a student loan balance talk you out of even running the numbers. The number of people I meet who assumed they were years away and were not is genuinely high. Assuming is expensive in both directions.

A sensible order of operations

1. Log into your servicer and find out, in writing, what your required monthly payment is today and what it becomes under each plan available to you.
2. Pull your own credit and look at what the student loan tradelines actually say. Balance, status, reported payment.
3. Have someone run the debt-to-income math under more than one program before you decide anything — including the plan you enroll in.
4. Then choose your repayment plan, with the housing math as one input among several rather than an afterthought.

That is the whole sequence. It takes an afternoon and it routinely changes the answer.

Common questions

My loans are in deferment for another two years. Do they still count?

In most cases yes — and deferment usually produces the highest assumed payment, not the lowest. FHA uses 0.5% of the balance. Fannie Mae uses 1% when the loan is deferred or in forbearance. Being in deferment does not make the debt disappear from the calculation.

Does RAP help or hurt my debt-to-income ratio?

It depends entirely on your income and balance, which is an unsatisfying answer but an honest one. RAP produces a required monthly payment like any other plan, and that payment is what a lender will use where the program accepts a documented income-driven payment. The right move is to get the actual RAP figure from your servicer rather than estimating it.

If my spouse has the student loans and I do not, can we leave them off?

Only if your spouse is not on the loan application, and California being a community property state adds wrinkles depending on the program. Sometimes a one-borrower application is the cleanest path; sometimes it costs you the income you needed. It is worth modeling both ways rather than guessing.

Should I pay the balance down before applying?

Sometimes, and the math is sharper than people expect. On programs that assume a percentage of the balance, reducing the balance directly reduces the assumed payment — which can be far more efficient per dollar than the same money going toward a down payment. On programs that use your documented payment instead, paying down principal may not move the qualifying number at all. Same dollars, opposite outcomes, depending on the rulebook.

Where this fits

Student loans are one obstacle inside a much larger process. If you are earlier in the journey, start with the complete 2026 guide to buying a house in San Diego, which walks the whole sequence start to finish. For the payment side of the equation, the real monthly math on affordability is the companion piece, and how much down payment you actually need covers the other half of the cash question. More at the buyer guide.

Ron Berg · The Berg Group · Powered by C2 Financial Corp
NMLS #974839 · C2 Financial Corp NMLS #135622 · Equal Housing Opportunity

Rate figures cited are national averages from the Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey released September 10, 2026, and are not an offer, quote, or commitment to lend. Agency guidelines described here are general and subject to lender overlays, program requirements, and change; individual results depend on a full review of your credit, income, and assets. Student loan repayment plan selection carries tax, forgiveness, and long-term interest consequences outside the scope of mortgage guidance — consult your loan servicer or a qualified student loan or tax professional before making changes.

14 minute read. Written for first-time and move-up buyers in San Diego County — and for the people who keep getting conflicting advice from the internet.

The short version

• The 30-year fixed averaged 6.71% nationally in Freddie Mac’s survey dated September 3, 2026 — up from 6.66% the prior week, and up from 6.50% a year ago.
• San Diego County inventory has climbed to roughly 6,400 active listings, about 3.2 months of supply — the most since 2019. Homes are taking a median of ~28 days to sell.
• More inventory and slower days-on-market means you have something buyers here have not had in five years: time to think.
• The 2026 conforming loan limit for San Diego County is $1,104,100. Above that you are in jumbo territory, which is a different underwriting conversation.
• The single biggest mistake I see is doing these steps out of order. Financing first, house second. Not the reverse.

Who this guide is for

I have been writing shorter pieces on individual parts of this process for a while now — down payments, affordability, condo financing, jumbo limits. This is the piece that puts them in order, because the questions I get most often are not really about any one step. They are about sequencing. People want to know what to do first.

This is for you if you are buying in San Diego County in the next twelve months and you want the actual mechanics rather than encouragement. I am a mortgage loan officer, not a cheerleader. Some of what follows is going to sound less exciting than what you read elsewhere. That is intentional.

Step 1: Understand what the 2026 market actually is

There is a version of the San Diego market that lives in people’s heads, and it is roughly 2021. Multiple offers, waived everything, decisions made in an afternoon. That market is over. It ended gradually enough that a lot of buyers never updated.

Here is what replaced it. Inventory countywide is around 6,400 listings with about 3.2 months of supply, the healthiest that number has looked since 2019. The median home is sitting roughly 28 days before it goes pending. Neither of those figures describes a frenzy. They describe a market that has come back toward balance.

What that means practically: you can see a house twice. You can order an inspection and actually read it. You can ask for a credit. You can walk away from a bad one and there will be another. None of that was reliably true three years ago.

It does not mean prices are collapsing. They are not. It means the negotiating posture has shifted, and buyers who are still bracing for a bidding war tend to overpay out of reflex.

A note on price data: you will see wildly different “San Diego median price” figures depending on the source, because different outlets measure the city versus the county, and all-property-types versus single-family only. I am deliberately not quoting one here. Days on market and months of supply are more honest indicators of what you are walking into.

Step 2: Get your financing sorted before you look at houses

This is the step people skip, and it is the one that costs them.

Looking at homes before you know your financing is like shopping without knowing whether you have fifty dollars or five thousand. It is not just inefficient — it is actively harmful, because you will fall for something outside your range and everything affordable will feel like a downgrade afterward.

What you actually want is a fully underwritten pre-approval rather than the thirty-second online version. The difference matters: a real one means an underwriter has looked at your income documents, your assets, and your credit before you write an offer, instead of after. In a market where listing agents are again scrutinizing offers, that letter carries weight a soft credit pull does not.

Start here: begin a pre-qualification. It takes about ten minutes and it costs nothing.

Step 3: Work out what you can actually carry

There are two different numbers here and conflating them is expensive.

The first is the maximum a lender’s guidelines will allow. The second is the payment you can carry without resenting your house. These are rarely the same number, and the gap between them is where financial stress lives.

I walk through the arithmetic in detail in how much house can you afford in San Diego, but the short version is that your payment is four things stacked: principal and interest, property taxes, homeowners insurance, and — in most of the county — HOA dues or Mello-Roos. In newer developments the last two can be several hundred dollars a month, and buyers routinely forget to include them until they are deep into escrow.

Do this part on paper before you fall in love with anything.

Step 4: Figure out the down payment

The twenty-percent rule is the most persistent myth in this business. It is not a requirement. It never was. It is a threshold at which mortgage insurance drops off, which is a real benefit but not an entry fee.

Conventional financing goes down to 3% for qualifying buyers. FHA sits at 3.5%. VA, for those who have earned it, can go to zero. Each of those has trade-offs in monthly cost and in how competitive your offer looks. I break the options down in what down payment you actually need in San Diego.

The honest framing is this: a smaller down payment gets you in sooner at a higher monthly cost. A larger one costs you liquidity you might want for the roof. Neither is automatically correct, and anyone who tells you otherwise without seeing your numbers is guessing.

Step 5: Decide what you are actually buying

Detached house, condo, or townhome is not only a lifestyle question. It is a financing question, and in 2026 it is a bigger one than it used to be.

Condo financing tightened meaningfully this year. Lenders are looking harder at HOA reserves, deferred maintenance, litigation, and the percentage of units that are rentals. A building that financed easily in 2022 may not today, and buyers find this out late — sometimes after they are in contract. If a condo is on your list, read what changed in 2026 condo financing before you write an offer, not after.

And if you are shopping above $1,104,100 in San Diego County, you have crossed into jumbo territory. Different guidelines, usually more reserves, often a different rate structure. The 2026 jumbo limits post covers the thresholds.

Step 6: Write the offer

With more inventory, offer strategy has changed. The reflex to strip every contingency and bid over asking made sense in 2021 and makes very little sense now.

Two things worth understanding before you write:

Seller credits versus price reductions. When a seller has room to move, buyers usually ask for a lower price. Depending on your situation and how long you plan to hold, a credit applied toward buying down your rate can be worth more per dollar than the same amount off the price. It depends on your time horizon, and the math is not intuitive. I ran the comparison in rate buydown vs. price reduction.

Appraisal risk. In a market with real price movement, appraisals occasionally come in under contract price. This is not the end of the transaction. There is a formal process for challenging it, and it works more often than most buyers assume — see the reconsideration of value playbook.

Step 7: Get through escrow without creating your own problems

Most escrow failures I see are self-inflicted, and they follow a pattern. Between offer acceptance and funding, do not:

• Open a credit card, finance furniture, or buy a car. Your debt-to-income ratio is re-checked before funding.
• Change jobs, go from salaried to self-employed, or take a pay structure change, without telling your loan officer first.
• Move large sums between accounts without documentation. Underwriters need to source deposits, and an unexplained transfer stalls files.
• Go quiet. If something in your life changes, tell me the day it happens, not the week before funding.

None of these are dramatic on their own. All of them have delayed closings.

The realistic timeline

Condo purchases run at the long end of that escrow window more often than detached homes, mostly because HOA documentation arrives on the HOA’s schedule rather than yours.

When NOT to buy right now

I would rather lose a transaction than put someone in a house that breaks them. There are situations where waiting is the correct answer:

• You are likely to move within two to three years. Transaction costs on both ends are real. On a short horizon, renting frequently wins outright.
• Your income is about to change and you know it. A pending job change, a business you are about to start, a partner going back to school. Qualify on stable income, not on income you are hoping for.
• The purchase would leave you with no reserves. If closing empties the account, the first repair becomes a credit card balance. In San Diego, that first repair often arrives with the first serious rain.
• You are buying because you feel behind. That is the worst reason on the list and the most common one I hear. The market will still be here.

Frequently asked

Is it better to wait for rates to drop? Nobody knows where rates go, including people who sound very confident about it. The 30-year averaged 6.71% in the September 3 survey, 6.66% the week before, and 6.50% a year ago — the pattern of the last year has been movement in both directions rather than a trend. What I can say is that the cost of a rate is changeable later and the price you pay is not. If rates fall meaningfully, refinancing is a conversation. If prices rise while you wait, that is permanent.

How much do I need in cash beyond the down payment? Plan on closing costs of roughly 2–3% of the purchase price, plus whatever reserves your loan program requires, plus a genuine cushion for moving and immediate repairs. Sellers do sometimes cover part of the closing costs — that is negotiable, and more negotiable now than it was.

Does a pre-approval hurt my credit? A mortgage inquiry has a small, short-lived effect, and multiple mortgage inquiries inside a shopping window are typically treated as one event by scoring models. Shopping is not penalized the way people fear.

Can I buy with student loan debt? Frequently, yes. What matters is the monthly payment relative to your income, not the balance. Large balances on income-driven plans are treated differently than people expect.

Should I use the listing agent’s lender? You are never required to. Compare. It is one of the few decisions in this process that is entirely yours and costs nothing to make carefully.

The order, one more time

Financing first. Budget second. Property type third. Then look. Then offer. Then protect the file until it funds.

Buyers who follow that order tend to close on time and stay comfortable afterward. Buyers who start at “look” tend to end up in one of two places — outbid on something they could not afford, or in a house with a payment they quietly resent. I have watched both, many times.

More on individual pieces of this in the buyer guide and on the blog. If you are buying this fall specifically, I wrote about the seasonal window most buyers miss.

Ron Berg — The Berg Group, powered by C2 Financial Corp. I have spent my career explaining mortgage mechanics to San Diego buyers who were tired of being sold to.

Ron Berg, NMLS #974839. C2 Financial Corporation, NMLS #135622. Equal Housing Opportunity. Rate figures cited are national averages published by Freddie Mac’s Primary Mortgage Market Survey and are not an offer, quote, or commitment to lend. All loans are subject to underwriting review, and terms available to any individual borrower will depend on that borrower’s complete financial profile and the property involved. This article is general education, not individualized financial, tax, or legal advice.