My name is Debbie Sutton, and I'm a mortgage lender here at Heritage Bank of the South. I would like to talk today a little bit about what's going on in the mortgage industry. The biggest thing I want to make clear to people is that you do not have to do a 20 percent down payment when you're purchasing a house now. There's been a lot of information on the national news about that you no longer can buy a house without putting a 20 percent down payment, and that simply is not true. There are several programs out there that you might be eligible for. One is FHA, which only allows you to have to put down three and a half percent to purchase a home.

The other program is USDA, which will do 100 percent financing if you're buying in an area that is acceptable for USDA. The other option is also a VA loan if you have VA eligibility and benefits, that they will do 100 percent financing. The other option would be a VA loan, which will also finance 100 percent on a house if you have a VA eligibility.

So there are many options to consider when you're buying a home. The first thing that we tell people is that you need to get prequalified before you start the house hunt, and you can get prequalified with a lender of your choice. All you would need to do is go in, fill out a loan application, provide them with some financial information, paystubs, that type of thing.

Also, they will pull your credit, and look at your credit scores and tell you exactly how much home you can afford and whether or not you can be approved to get a mortgage. That's the most important step, and most realtors are going to ask you if you've been prequalified because if you haven't they're going to send you to a bank or a lender to get prequalified prior to showing you houses because they want to show you something that you can afford.

If you'd like to go through the prequalification process, it's an easy process. You can actually go onto our website at eheritagebank.com and go to the mortgage lending site. There is an application there which you can pull off and fill out. You can also get the names of a couple of lenders here at our branch depending on where you'd like to do business.

You can contact them through email or by phone and set up an appointment to bring the application in and sit down with a lender and go through the facts of what you need to do to buy a house.