Spacious bedrooms and bathrooms? Yes. A roomy kitchen? Yes. A good-sized backyard, storage space in the attic, and just the right amount of visual appeal? Yes, yes, and yes.
Once you’ve found your perfect home, the next step is to find the right mortgage—which can sometimes feel like you’re competing in a contact sport, getting blindsided by confusing requests or financial surprises throughout the application process.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, 63.7 percent of Americans own their homes. But getting there hasn’t always been easy. A 2017 NerdWallet survey reports that 42 percent of homeowners found the home-buying process stressful, a third said it was complicated, and 21 percent found it intimidating.
To help you become a mortgage whiz, Ally Home has created “The Mortgage Playbook,” a free and easy-to-read resource. Written by members of the Ally Home Team, a dedicated group of lending experts, the “Playbook” features four sections that cover the entire field—from a game plan to get started to approval and closing on a mortgage. It also demystifies 
confusing financial terms, helping applicants avoid headaches during the home-buying process.
To help you prepare for the big day of your mortgage, here are three key tips from Ally’s experts:
• Maximize your financial fitness. There are five steps consumers should follow to improve their “financial fitness” before applying for a mortgage. They include demonstrating stable employment, managing debt, paying off credit accounts, building assets like savings or retirement accounts to strengthen credit history, and reviewing (and correcting, if necessary) their credit reports.
• Know your numbers. Applicants can use free online tools, like the Affordability Calculator available at www.Ally.com, to find out how much house they can afford. 
With two pieces of data—monthly income and monthly debt—it’s possible to quickly calculate the debt-to-income ratio. In most cases, this ratio should not exceed 43 percent, meaning that the monthly mortgage payment and other debt obligations (car loan, student loan, credit card payments) should not account for more than 43 percent of gross monthly income.
• Know which type of mortgage is best for you. One of the biggest decisions for applicants is choosing between a fixed-rate mortgage or an adjustable-rate mortgage. When interest rates are low, the fixed-rate option may be the best choice. But if rates are high, the adjustable-rate mortgage may make sense, as its lower initial rate results in smaller monthly payments for a specific period (usually five, seven, or 10 years) before the rate can change.
Source: StatePoint. For more valuable tips, visit ally.com/docs/bank/ally-home-playbook to download the complete “Mortgage Playbook.”