I hear customers saying all of the time, "what do I do first?". This may surprise you coming from a Real Estate professional, but the absolute first thing that you want to do is talk to a mortgage professional, even before a Real Estate Agent and here is why.
Visit Part 1 if you have not yet.
Pre-qualification or Pre-Approval: You are going to need at least a pre-qualification letter from a lender before any listing agent will take an offer you submit seriously, so it is better to have the letter ahead of time in case you quickly find a house that you love. Also a lot of the more experienced buyers agents don't want to spend a lot of time with you until you are pre-qualified as well and for good reason, if you cannot get a mortgage than you are wasting your own time as well as their time. Another benefit of seeing you mortgage professional first is, that if they offer pre-approvals, you can obtain a loan commitment before you identify a property, this tells a seller and listing agent that they do not have to worry about accepting your offer only to have it fall through because you are unable to obtain financing. A pre-qualification letter means that a loan officer thinks he can get you a loan, a pre-approval with a loan commitment means that an underwriter has said that you can have a loan based on your information.
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