Wednesday, 16 March 2011

Pre-Qualification and Pre-Approval

By Thomas Waits


A lot of people make the oversight of starting their quest for a new property by hunting for properties they like. However, the appropriate place to start is to figure out how much you can pay for and that usually means meeting with a loan representative so you can get pre-approved to borrow.

After you work with the loan official to get pre-approved, the loan originator will take a look at cash flow as well as resources and the terms of the mortgage loan to determine the specific loan sum you may most likely meet the criteria for. This instantly informs you what your precise budget is.

Once you begin home shopping, knowing what you really can afford from the beginning sets the scope of your home-buying technique and will allow you and your broker better focus your energy to find the best property for your income.

Pre-Qualification vs. Pre-Approval

Don't make the wrong choice of assuming the words pre-qualification and pre-approval are interchangeable. They're not, and the variation is an important one. Whenever a home buyer is pre-qualified, the loan company performs a quick check to identify how large a home mortgage the client can pay for. The mortgage lender looks at essential data on cash flow, the balances and expenses on current money owed, and how much capital has been saved for a down payment. Qualifying ratios are utilized on those figures to determine which percentage of your gross monthly earnings can be used to pay for the home loan and associated expenditures. Simply, when pre-qualified, the financial institution is saying it would "most likely" say yes to the buyer for the amount of money. At the end of the day, pre-qualification is an estimation, a sort of educated guess at what the customer can manage to pay for.

Pre-approval, however, goes further. During pre-approval, the bank inspects and verifies your personal debt, earnings, savings, assets and credit rating to ensure you can repay the mortgage amount. Where pre-qualification is a sort of educated guess of the buyer's buying power, pre-approval says the possible debtor would unquestionably be accepted for the mortgage loan.

The Pre-Approval Approach

The pre-approval procedure centers on paperwork. The mortgage company is trying to verify how much you make, your personal savings and your other financial means. The loan officer will ask you for a multitude of documents ranging from pay-stubs to standard bank statements to investment account forms. Also, the loan service will order a credit report to check your credit scores.

Your paperwork will then be analyzed against a variety of qualification demands, and, when it has been identified that you meet them, you will be pre-approved for the loan. Your mortgage company will present you with a notification or certification stating that you are pre-approved for the amount of money. You'll also be given a good faith appraisal detailing the sum and terms of the mortgage loan, such as settlement costs and whether the loan is fixed or adjustable.

A Bargaining Resource

In a real estate market like this one, your pre-approval notice becomes a remarkably powerful negotiating tool. While it is typically accepted that the current market is a buyer's market, home sellers are still being watchful about receiving offers, because so many buyers' financing can best be called " shakey." The last thing they want is an offer from a seller that doesn't truly have the needed capital.

Using a pre-approval notice, the seller can have complete confidence that the offer you make is going to be one they can rely on. That kind of relief can normally result in a very happy deal for buyer and seller as well.




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