Here are suggestions to protect yourself from predatory lenders:

Types of lenders: Traditional bank. Savings bank.

Here are some possible red flags to watch for in the good faith estimate: Prepayment penalties (a fee if you want to pay off your loan early or refinance later). Balloon payments (low payments in the beginning that later skyrocket).

What happens if you are working with a real-estate agent and you want to see a house that is ”For Sale by Owner”? While there are some agents who won’t show clients homes that are not represented by another agent, most agents will go to the home seller, explain there is a party interested in seeing the home and ask whether the seller would honor the buyer agent’s 3 to 3.5 percent commission.

So you’ve figured out that you can afford to buy a house. Now what

When you’re looking for that dream home, there are a lot of ways you can do it — scouring the ads and browsing online photos, attending open houses and driving around neighborhoods.

Today on the front page of the Beacon Journal, Home reporter Mary Beth Breckenridge and I start a two-part series on how to buy your first home. It was designed as a primer for people who might find in a period of high housing inventory and low mortgage rates, that it’s the right time to buy a home.

Can you afford to buy a house? Maybe. Can you afford to own a house

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Bus tour of foreclosed homes