So many things have changed in recent years, but Even More Important Today Than 4 Years Ago - Great Advice. That advice being..... if you want to buy a home in my market, please have a confidential meeting with your lender and get pre-approved before you go shopping for a home. You will know you can afford and how much money a lender will be willing to lend you for the most part. Heard this before? .... you bet. See "Pre-Approval - An E-Ticket to Ride." This post was from 2010.
Many of your questions will be answered at the head end and you will also have the start of an extremely valuable relationship started. Besides, sellers will know by the letter that you are serious about buying real estate and look more intently at your offer. "Do I want to sell my home to this guy with the proven credit or should I take the chance that this other one will get approved within the next few days?" A bird in the hand, or a bird in the bush?
Why am I bringing this up again? Even though this request is always part of my first meeting with the prospect, this time, the buyer found an out of state lender who sent a pre-qualification letter rather than a pre-approval. Had the lender actually done the work, he would not have sent any letter (which would have confirmed my suspicions) and saved the young couple a lot of heartache from having their hopes up and then having them dashed. As soon as I saw the pre-QUALIFICATION letter, I immediately sent them back to the lender who then did his job which resulted in him declining to write the APPROVAL letter.
What... you ask why I gave them this lender recommendation? ........ I DIDN'T. They chose to not even look into the lenders that I knew well, had had past successes with, and who had been vetted by my broker YEARS AGO. Instead, they went on line and had lenders compete for their business. Not sure that the lender successful in capturing their attention had ever written a loan in Southern California or had even seen the C.A.R. Joint Purchase Agreement and Escrow Instructions. KNOW WHO YOU ARE DOING BUSINESS WITH..... Get a recommendation from family, friends or your REALTOR(R), and even then ask lots of questions before you accept this company as your lender. At the risk of sounding like a broken record, my Featured post "You Can, But Should You" addresses this really important aspect of home buying more completely.
Even More Important Today Than 4 Years Ago - the Great Advice is to GET PRE-APPROVED Before you go home shopping and make sure it is an approval from someone with a great track record that people you know can vouch for.
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