It's never too early. Six months out, a year out, even longer is fine, and waiting until you feel "ready" usually just means missing the runway when you could have fixed things. No amount of Googling gives you what twenty focused minutes with an experienced loan officer does, because the answer depends on your specific file, and general rules only get you so far. A good early conversation is a working session, with no pitch to buy now. We start by asking what you're hoping to accomplish and what questions you have, then get practical: your target area, the price range of homes you'd actually want to live in, how much cash you have now versus what you're saving monthly, and any other resources like retirement funds or a family gift. From there we can flag what's strong, what needs work (paying down a balance, seasoning funds, documenting income), and roughly what your qualifying amount, monthly payment, and cash to close would look like. That last part lets you house-hunt inside your real budget instead of guessing. A couple of prerequisites help the numbers mean something, mainly steady employment, but you don't need everything buttoned up to start. One tell: if a lender jumps straight into a robotic "what's your income, what's your credit score" script without learning your actual situation, you're talking to the wrong person. The early, no-pressure version is exactly what the free Roadmap conversation is for: about 20 minutes where we run your real numbers.