Why should you be pre-approved before beginning the home search?
Purchasing a home is a huge deal. It’s a big investment and requires you to essentially “get naked” with your finances and your lender. You have to really start being conscious about the money coming in and going out of your bank accounts and beginning a relationship with a trusted lender is the first serious step. How much can you actually afford and how much will you be comfortable paying monthly?
Two terms you may have heard of are “pre-qualified” and “pre-approved.” In order to get pre-qualified, you will talk with a lender about your income, assets, debts, etc. and the lender will give you an idea of how much you can borrow and which type of mortgage would be best for you. Being pre-approved means that the lender has actually looked at your credit history and documents and given you the go for a specific amount.
You will want to find a lender that you trust, that genuinely is interested in working with you step by step throughout the entire process because the financing is the MOST important part of the entire real estate transaction. In addition, sellers want to make sure that the buyers walking through their homes are actually able to purchase a home for that price. Why waste your time or the sellers time if you cannot actually buy a home for that price?
It is also very important to be prepared with a pre-approval because of the competition during certain times of year. Lately, due to extremely low inventory, there have been multiple buyers for each property. You need a pre-approval letter to submit with any offer you write or else yours won’t be considered.
If you are looking for someone to work with, we have several lenders we work closely with that we would recommend and love for you to get the process going today!