Purchasing a Home at 25: Building Your Credit Score

As a young adult just starting out in my career, the last thing I am thinking about is purchasing real estate. With limited savings for a down payment and shaky plans for where I want to settle permanently, purchasing real estate doesn’t seem like the wisest choice. Having parents that both work in real estate, however, means that I’m constantly being given information on the current market. Before coming on board with Hart Real Estate Solutions, my real estate knowledge didn’t extend much further than what I knew from the Christian Bale movie The Big Short. The idea that one man could take down the entire real estate market made my investment in real estate equivalent to the feeling of playing the lottery. I spent a good deal of time in statistics classes during college, however. The one thing that I’ve learned to trust more than anything else is numbers. Following real estate trends, as HartRES has in our market guides, the market is growing rapidly without any real signs of slowing up. With the way the market is growing, waiting on purchasing real estate could mean that I won’t have options down the road. Home prices might start growing outside my price range, preventing me from ever purchasing a home. Purchasing a home now and renting the home out would allow me to build equity in a home as a young adult, giving me options down the road after I settle.

Armed with numbers I trust, my head has started spinning with questions.

Can I afford this?

How do I start?

How do I qualify for a loan?

Is my credit score high enough?

How do I build my credit?

I sat down with loan officer Courtney Adkins with Rocky Mountain Credit Union to discuss my long list of questions. Over the next couple of weeks Courtney and I will be addressing some of the questions I have regarding purchasing a home as a young adult.

You can check out a short video below on our discussion on what my optimal credit score needs to be and different options to build my credit quickly.