1003 Form: The Dreaded Financial Questionnaire

Uniform residential mortgage loan application form is a fancy way of describing the 1003 form. In the real estate world, every person who is applying for a home mortgage must fill one out. As you can tell by the long title, it’s a pretty detailed form. Since mortgage lenders are working with large amounts of money, they want all the financial information they can possibly obtain from their clients.

Loan officers and mortgage brokers must be well acquainted with this and all documents related to buying and selling the types of properties they specialize in. The successful lender knows how to help you work through the stress of what is a huge event in your life. In fact buying a home is the largest single purchase many people will ever make. If you don’t fully understand what’s on the form, you’ll have a hard time believing that you really can get through this process.

It’s almost a given these days that anyone shopping for a mortgage should first get pre-qualified. Interest rates change daily and in some markets the home prices do too. In addition to potentially losing your dream home to someone who is already approved, you may waste a lot of time shopping for homes beyond what you realistically can afford.

Basically the hardest part of form 1003 is getting all of the documentation together. It’s a great idea to create a system for organizing everything. All of the papers need to end up in a central location so they won’t be scattered all over the place when it’s time for the review. The lender wants to see proof of employment, income, assets (especially anything to be used as collateral), tax records, other property owned now or in the past, monthly expenses, yearly expenses, and any other pertinent financial information.

As with many things, the Internet has made the 1003 form easier. You can buy your own software package that does all the calculations as you enter information, although we can save you that expense.. You can download the 1003 form, “practice” with it until you understand.

We all dread filling out forms, especially such detailed ones as the 1003. Usually it isn’t so bad once you get started. Do your best to try to relax and allow plenty of time to get everything done.