Getting Pre-Approved

Buyers are in such a hurry to get in the car and look at houses that they forget about the first and second steps many times. In my opinion the very first step is interviewing a few agents, there will be more about this later. Once you have found a great agent to help with your home purchase then you need to find out how much home you can actually afford.

The Pre-Approval process is simple and painless these days. The most important part of this process is to work with a reputable local lender. The large internet lenders claim to be this and that, but the reality is they have fallen far short of the needs of home buyers. Worse Illinois has many regulations that out of state lenders never know about and this causes delays in closings or worse. So now the question becomes what local loan person should you work with?

Who to use?

• I strongly believe that home buyers will get better service and many times lower fees and/or rates when they work with the loan officer that is referred by the real estate agent. The reason is that the loan officer isn’t only trying to make you happy, but also keep their relationship with the real estate agent. The loan officer can’t give the agent money for sending business, so they have to make sure to do an amazing job for each and every one of the agents clients.

Why bother with a pre-approval?

• The simple answer is most sellers will require it.
• More important is so you don’t waste your time.
• On the emotional side, so you don’t find a house fall in love with it to then find out that you can’t afford the home
• One the practical side, would you want to accept a contract on your home if the buyer wasn’t pre-approved?

When?

• When you have decided what agent you want to work with you should then call the mortgage person they referred and get the process started. You should know how much you can afford before walking into a single home. Again why chance seeing something that you fall in love with only to find out that you can’t afford it.