Buying or refinancing a home means learning a vocabulary nobody taught you in school. This page collects the reading Theresa Rolen points clients to most often, the handbook she wrote for first-time buyers, the guides that explain each loan program in plain language, and the short practical notes she calls Huntress Tips. Read as much or as little as you want. When you'd rather just ask a human, that option is at the bottom.
Start with the Homebuyer's Guide
The Homebuyer's Guide is Theresa's free download and the best first stop if you've never done this before. It walks through what happens from the first conversation to closing day, what a lender is actually looking at when they review your file, and which decisions are reversible and which ones aren't. It's written the way she talks, no jargon for the sake of jargon.
If you're somewhere in the middle, you've owned a home before but haven't financed one in a decade, skim it anyway. The paperwork and the programs have changed more than most people expect.
Let me do the hunting for you.
Loan program guides worth reading before you shop
Each of these has its own page on this site with the details, the trade-offs and a FAQ section. Here's what each one is for, so you know which to open first:
- FHA loans, a common route for buyers with a smaller down payment or a shorter credit history. The guide explains how FHA differs from a conventional loan and what to expect from the appraisal and mortgage insurance side.
- Refinancing and cash-out, whether you're changing your term, changing your loan type, or pulling equity out for a project. The guide covers what a refinance costs and how to think about whether the math works for you.
- Jumbo loans, for loan amounts above conforming limits, where documentation and reserves are reviewed more closely than most borrowers anticipate.
- Physician mortgage loans, built around residents, fellows and newly practicing physicians whose income and student debt don't fit a standard underwriting box.
- Adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs), how the fixed period, the adjustment schedule and the caps actually work, and the situations where an ARM makes sense instead of a 30-year fixed.
- Real estate investor financing, DSCR loans, fix and flip financing, house hacking and multi-unit purchases, bridge loans and HELOCs, all grouped together because investors usually need more than one of them.
Huntress Tips: getting your documents together
Most of the delay in a mortgage file comes from documents, not from decisions. Gathering these before you start makes everything that follows shorter and calmer:
- Two most recent years of W-2s or 1099s, plus your two most recent pay stubs.
- Two most recent years of federal tax returns, with all schedules, especially if you're self-employed or have rental income.
- Two most recent months of statements for every account you'd use for a down payment or reserves, all pages, even the blank ones.
- A note on any large or unusual deposit in those statements, so it doesn't become a question later.
- Photo ID, and current statements for any debts that won't show up cleanly on a credit report.
Huntress Tip: don't open new credit, move money between accounts without a paper trail, or change jobs mid-process without telling Theresa first. None of those are automatically a problem, they're only a problem when nobody knows about them until underwriting finds them.
Ask The Huntress, or get pre-qualified
Reading only takes you so far. Theresa has been a mortgage loan officer and advisor, and she works with clients in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Arkansas, Tennessee, Texas and Washington. If a guide raised a question instead of answering one, send it through Ask The Huntress and she'll answer it directly rather than handing you a brochure.
When you're ready to find out what you can work with, the pre-qualification form is the next step. It's a conversation, not a commitment.
Reach Theresa Rolen, The Huntress Home Loan Pro, at (913) 705-0049or start your pre-qualification online and she'll follow up.
Theresa Rolen NMLS #2249004. Brokerage: Copeland Mortgage Co. DBA Summit Lending NMLS #1850081. Equal Housing Opportunity.