Watch for an advisor who tells you what to do without showing you the math behind it. If someone says you should not use an FHA loan, they owe you the trade-off: maybe FHA saves you a few hundred dollars a month in payment but costs you FHA's upfront mortgage insurance premium. You can only make that call when both numbers sit side by side. A pro who dismisses a program out of hand is revealing their own bias, since loan officers make the same money regardless of program. Another red flag: a loan officer who suddenly finds thousands of dollars in credits the moment you mention you are shopping other lenders. There is no magic margin hiding in these transactions, so a pitch that only improves under pressure is a sales tactic, plain and simple. A good rule of thumb: if the conversation feels like it is steering you toward a decision instead of laying out your options and trade-offs, be skeptical, the same way you would with a used-car pitch. Plenty of people in this business are simply the wrong fit, so be choosy. The free Roadmap conversation is built as the opposite of that pressure: about 20 minutes, we run your real numbers, put your actual qualification range and payment in front of you, and you decide.